Blood and Royalty (Book three of the Royalty Trilogy): 2016 Modernized Format (Dragoneers Saga)
Page 11
It was a sword of healing, after all, and neither of them were sick. They were just different. Like Amelia and Clover were different.
That makes me double different, his daughter said, startling Jenka out of his thoughts and reminding him that she was just nine years old. And why do you think of Clover so much?
Jenka didn’t answer that one. He did his best to shield his thoughts from her, too, but he had a feeling it was a rhetorical question because the scene unfolding before them drew her attention, then his, and held it raptly.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Amelia watched as the song she’d sung earlier kept resonating in the slower time happening around them. She saw her mother, brother, and Uncle Rikky in the arc of High Draci she’d willed to be. She saw Golden, too, and felt a twinge of pain for Marcherion, but it was more for Uncle Rikky’s loss because Marcherion hadn’t been a part of her life growing up. To her, he was just a rumor that showed back up one day with stories about her mysterious uncle, King Richard.
The Sarsaraxus was almost into the shimmering portal she’d created to let it go home, but the alien destroyed by her parents and the other Dragoneers was healing and not letting go.
Then the Sarsaraxus finally stretched the other creature thin enough to pull itself into the void the suspended dragon dour was creating.
Amelia’s father gasped beside her when the now monstrously large Sarsaraxus was squeezed into a minute point and stretched away to the world from which it had come.
Amelia knew that world as if it were a memory, but she knew she couldn’t go for the elements of life had no reign there. Water and air were naught but gases in the spherical area between that planet’s surface and its outer limits.
The white alien creature didn’t let go, and some satisfaction passed to Amelia and her father when it used its ability to pull itself into the void behind the thing it held, following it away from their world.
Then the sky exploded into a sparkling shower as all the magic dissipated and everything was thrown back into real time.
There was some sorrow flowing through Amelia and her father, too, for there were still a handful of white swimming things spouting out their anger and disappointment over being left behind.
She wondered why they weren’t also being healed by Errion Spightre’s magic, but she didn’t dare touch another of them and draw that mess back to their world.
The void where the Sarsaraxus had been standing in the water was now closing, and the siphon that spun down from the heavens had gone unseen by all but the four of them.
What mudged were left were fleeing the sky now, unsuspended, since she was no longer moving so quickly. The dragons were gathering themselves, some of them chasing the mudged, others starting back to the mainland mountains from which they’d come.
What is his name? her father asked. She knew he was talking about her dragon.
He is a she, Amelia said, matter of factly. Her name is Vincaminor, but I call her Peri.
Peri? he asked, not getting the connection, which exasperated her.
Like the color periwinkle blue. She rolled her eyes, wondering if her mother wasn’t right about his intelligence all coming from the alien.
Clover and her mighty dragon were in the process of taking over Vikaria. She had heard the ballad of Orn Spike at least a hundred times. She knew every word but a certain verse had been ringing in her ears since she’d held the weapon in her hands.
The wizard and the king marched the armies off to battle,
taking all the fighters, both on foot and those in saddle.
Then the wizard’s daughter and the dragon that she rode,
flew right into the kingdom and claimed that throne her own.
Clover was no wizard’s daughter, though Master Zarvin was more a father to her than any man had ever been. That aside, she and Crimzon were reclaiming his territory, for all the divided lands needed to be one, and she still owed King Amothy a favor, even though he was long dead. His descendent would sit the Karian seat after she made it whole again. Then she would seek out the dwarves and see about the lair and the horde. It was all still there, she figured.
It betters beesss, Crimzon hissed.
She hadn’t felt Marcherion die, but Crimzon felt Blaze’s death and almost shed a tear for the loss of one of his line. He was a territorial creature by nature, though, and he’d already set his heart on marking his old territory anew. All those years waiting in that dwarven flu, crippled and miserable, while Clover was imprisoned inside a temple he couldn’t even enter, had taken a toll on his sensitivity.
Clover didn’t mind. They were more or less immortal. The Dragoneers, at least some of them, were not. By uniting the kingdoms of Kar with dragon fear, they were helping the future of Jericho’s kingdom anyway. The Dragoneers didn’t need her anymore. Not with Milly there. At least that’s what Clover told herself as she and Crimzon chased Lord somebody or another and his esteemed troop of dragon slayers across an open field as if they were deer.
On Prince Jericho’s twenty-first birthday, Zahrellion gave him Errion Spightre, and Jenka stepped down from the throne, proclaiming him King Jericho.
This was done in private first, so that the sword’s power didn’t overwhelm the boy in front of the people gathered for the celebration. After he’d held the ancient weapon that first time, for a few minutes, Amelia eagerly asked him how it felt. She couldn’t wait to hear his answer.
“This is even better than girls,” was his reply, and Jenka was only saved from changing his mind by Zahrellion, who took his arm and led him to his place in the ceremony.
In just a month, the hundred foot tall granite statue of Marcherion that had taken so long to construct was to be unveiled. Everyone agreed it was the perfect first act of Jericho’s reign to remember those who had died to get them where they were.
Amelia, though, was getting a bit jealous, as adolescent girls sometimes do. Adolescent mystica, Zah corrected her thought, for she and Clover decided that the both of them had dodged an arrow.
Lemmy, who had long ago sworn with his life to protect Amelia and her brother, was keeping his word, for he kept Clover informed about everything the elves of Evermore did. Their quest to end anything perceived as able to give life to its will hadn’t ended when the Sarsaraxus escaped them. In fact, it only seemed to have made them worse.
Amelia and Clover talked often. Milly went into hyper-movement and teleported herself and Peri to the reuniting lands of Kar. She wasn’t bonded with Peri like the Dragoneers to their dragons. Clover wasn’t magically bonded with Crimzon, either, but that only made their couplings stronger, for they were made by choice, not by anything else. The two things Amelia kept from all of them, save her father, was that Peri was of Royal’s direct line. Peri’s mam was alive in the deepest area of the peaks. Royal had left them to go bond with Richard, for it was his destiny. The other thing she kept from all of them was that she would always side with Clover.
They were both mystica, after all, and mystica had to stick together. Besides, Clover was teaching Amelia the lesser magics of men, useful stuff, when she wasn’t able to suspend their time and have her way with them as long as she pleased.
Aikira did her best to spend time hunting with Rikky, but her husband had been found crippled in a pile of debris, and they had a son to worry about.
Rikky more or less turned into grumbling old Herald, and even nicked the ears of a few of his tougher boys to set an example.
Jericho offered several times to touch Rikky with Errion Spightre, because its magic might regrow his leg, but Rikky refused him, just as he refused to go to the Leif Repline fountain with Clover. “It is the lack of the limb that defines who I am now,” Rikky explained. “To have a leg again would destroy everything I’ve ever done to overcome the loss.”
For a very long time, the kingdom was at peace. Everyone prospered, and not even Amelia, who seemed to know everything else, knew of Clover’s frequent visits to the forest outside of King
sman’s Keep, to see Rikky.
About the Author
There are few writers in the genre of fantasy that can equal the creative mind of M.R. Mathias – now acknowledged as a master in this genre of dragons and dwarves, and magic, and spells, and all aspects of fantasy. — Top 100, Hall of Fame, Vine Voice, Book Reviewer, Grady Harp
M. R. Mathias is the multiple award winning author of the huge, #1 Bestselling, epic, The Wardstone Trilogy, as well as the #1 Bestselling Dragoneer Saga, the #1 Bestselling The Legend of Vanx Malic fantasy adventure series, and the #1 Bestselling Crimzon & Clover Short Short Series.
You can find M. R. Mathias at DragonCon every year. Just look for the #Wardstone Dragon Car. Book signings, and booth appearances will be listed in advance, on the blog.
Use these series hashtags on twitter to find maps, cover art, sales, giveaways, book reviews, upcoming releases, and contest information:
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Table of Contents
He is a she, Amelia said, matter of factly. Her name is Vincaminor, but I call her Peri.
Peri? he asked, not getting the connection, which exasperated her.
Like the color periwinkle blue. She rolled her eyes, wondering if her mother wasn’t right about his intelligence all coming from the alien.
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