“He’s okay once you get to know him,” I said reassuringly. “What’s going on, Destry?”
“I’ve been looking for you all over Andeluvia, chére!” Destry exclaimed, in an out-of-breath voice. “Sirrahon has come upon the Fayleene! The dragon, he is turning their sacred forest into a charnel house!”
Chapter Thirty
My heart sank. No, it would be better to say that it plummeted.
We’d run out of time. And Sirrahon was upon us. Galen’s handsome face was pale with shock. Shaw’s looked eager. Liam’s had a grim aspect I’d never seen before.
“We have to go, now!” Liam demanded.
“It will take you hours to reach the Fayleene woods on horseback,” Zenos pointed out. “At least a couple by griffin flight, as well.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said. I dug into the folds of my jacket, took out my gun and removed the spent magazine. “Galen, do you have enough magic built up now to get us there?”
He shot me a troubled look. “Yes…though I must warn you, I won’t have enough magic to bring us all back should we run into trouble.”
“I would rather die,” Liam said firmly, “than fail to protect my people.”
“Thou need not worry about thy griffin,” Shaw declared. “Wouldst I rather die ’ere I miss another chance to prove mine own mettle!”
I fished out my spare magazine. “Well, I’d prefer not to die if at all possible. But we’ve got no choice.”
“Then I shall notify the king and his palace guard,” Zenos said. He hefted the two books under his arm. “And you’ll need these.”
I took the Codex and the smaller book that Zenos had been using to help with the translation work and turned to Galen. The wizard nodded, grabbed the volumes in one beefy hand, and stuffed them into one of his saddlebags. I slapped home the fully loaded magazine into my weapon and steadied my breath. That was about all the preparation we were going to get.
“Let’s do this,” I said, trying my best to keep the shakiness out of my voice.
Galen’s voice rose and fell as he recited the words to his spell, and the world vanished in a white flash and the old-bleach smell of ozone. I’d braced myself better this time; the stomach-turning lurch didn’t knock me to my knees, at least.
The world swam into focus. I swayed on my feet for a moment. Retained my balance. But any pleasure I felt in my accomplishment was doused as soon as the smell hit my nose.
During transport, the ozone smell was terrible, but at least it was temporary. Fresh air wasn’t more than a second or two away.
Not this time.
Searing, hot wind blew ash into my face. Shaw let out a squawk of surprise and dismay. Ozone had been replaced with the thick, sooty smell of burning peppermint. Glowing embers rained down around us like some hellish kind of snowflake.
We stood in the smoldering remains of the Fayleene’s Sacred Grove. The great trees that had cast their branches overhead to form the cathedral-like roof had been smashed, branches turned to so much kindling. Bare trunks stood like pillars in an ancient, ruined temple. And lying half-buried amidst the debris that choked the clearing were the remains of Quinval’s charred body. Two other Fayleene, senior does by the looks of them, also sprawled nearby. A charnel reek emanated from their half-burned corpses. Flames still danced among the smaller trees and underbrush off to the left. On the right, pops and hisses rose up from the ash-choked waters of a little stream.
“By all that is sacred,” Galen whispered, as he took in the ruined, burning surroundings.
If the devastation shook Liam, he didn’t show it. Instead, he took a few steps forward, ears perked and focused ahead of us.
“Over here!” he called. “All Fayleene, to me!”
A rising crescendo of crackles came from the underbrush to the left. Dozens of Fayleene, most covered in soot and a couple sporting minor burns, emerged and began to join us in the clearing. A not-so-distant thud shook the ground, a horrible giant-sized footstep followed by an indescribably awful slithering sound.
“This is not the most desirable of situations,” Galen said, as he danced back a couple of steps. That might have been the understatement of the year, but he raised a hand, murmuring his words of power to himself. A ball of blue energy began to grow in his palm.
“Some luck still holds,” Liam remarked, as one of the Lead Does ran up to us. “It seems that Orlaith still lives.”
“Protector!” she brayed, as she slid to a stop before him, “We are undone! You and your friends must do what you can to stop this!”
I bit back a retort. Yes, the Fayleene had some nerve to say that, after threatening to kill us the last time we’d been within their Sacred Grove. But with their world shattered and members of their species lying dead around us, it wasn’t time for snappy comebacks.
“I shall,” Liam said firmly. He raised his voice so that it boomed into the clearing. “All of you, listen to me! I need your presence within the wood, your fey powers, to boost my own. Elsewise we must flee and be destroyed as we do so.”
One of the younger stags bleated plaintively. “What do you wish of us, Protector?”
Liam nodded towards the stream. “Shelter there. Follow the water away from the clearing so that you are under some cover, at least. I will do my best to keep the dragon away from you.”
“But what good will that do if the dragon–”
“It will help keep you from burning to death when the woods catch fire, if nothing else!” Liam snapped. “You heard me! Move!”
“Shaw, Galen,” I added, “come on. While the Fayleene head for the stream, we need to get to the far end of the grove. Otherwise we’re all one big target.”
Behind us, the spotted flanks of the Fayleene merged into a fawn-colored mass as they crossed the clearing and splashed into the stream. The water only reached as high as the bellies of the younger does and stags, but Liam was right about one thing: it would give his people at least a little protection from the fires that lit the woodland around them.
Shaw clambered over the masses of branches that clogged the clearing with ease. Galen had to help me over a few spots, wincing once or twice as burning embers continued to fall around us. At least I had some layered, non-flammable clothes on, and Shaw’s fur-and-feather combination gave him protection. Galen’s exposed equine hindquarters had no such protection.
Liam had a similar problem. As soon as he’d sent the herd of Fayleene on their way, he joined us at the far side of the clearing, trying his best to avoid the hot spots along the ground. A small burning leaf settled in the base of one antler. I swatted it away before it could hurt him. The wind shifted for a moment, shrouding us in mint-scented black smoke.
“I didn’t expect our dragon friend to set the place ablaze,” I coughed. “Is there anything we can do about this?”
Liam’s eyes scanned the cloudy skies overhead. The iron gray of the clouds was lit by the fire into the red of a celestial forge. He nodded, as if to himself.
“There just might be. With the new powers of mine, there just might be.”
The Fayleene princeling’s eyes glowed. They took on the same faraway look that I’d seen when Liam had ‘spoken’ to the various forest creatures. Shaw was the first to spot the new arrivals. He jabbed his beak in the air in excitement.
“Have my eyes gone tricksy?” he marveled. “’Tis been nigh upon thirty years since I have seen the like!”
I craned my neck and looked about until I spotted them. Two birds the size of California condors soared overhead with the effortless grace of red-tailed hawks on a spiraling thermal. Their bodies were solid black, with strange, squared-off wings and conical yellow claws.
“What are they?” I asked.
“Thunderbirds,” Galen replied, with an approving grin. “Very clever. A very rare species that I didn’t realize nested in these woods. They have two well-known abilities: calling down lightning is one. The other is–”
From far overhead, the twin birds let o
ut the thin, high-pitched whistle of a tea kettle that had been left on the stove for too long. Then in unison, they brought their wings down together on a single beat. Thunder rolled across the clearing, echoing off distant mountains.
Then the clouds overhead opened up with a drenching shower of cool rain.
The shower only lasted fifteen, twenty seconds at most, but the fires around us were beaten down and drowned under the fat load of raindrops. Other sections of forest continued to burn, but the flames had to fight for purchase now on the freshly moistened wood and damp bark.
And just like that, as I thought for a split second that things were starting to look up, another thud shook the ground. A slither. Followed by another thud, one overlaid with the bending and snapping sound of trees splintering under an unimaginable weight.
We all looked skyward as a shadow rippled across our faces.
A shape loomed above the trees. A hot wind blasted my cheeks again, like someone had swung open the burn-box of a wood stove. The moist beads of rain that clung to my hair evaporated in an instant. Above the horrible whamming of my heart, I heard the pumping-bellows sound of enormous, leathery wings.
The dragon looked ash-black for a moment. But as he drew into the light I saw that his scales were the all-too-familiar color of drying blood. They glistened, but not with the sheen of a healthy snake. The creature’s scales were the thickness of terra-cotta roof tile, and they gleamed like slabs of ruddy marble shot through with veins of mica.
At first glance, Sirrahon didn’t quite look like one of the dragons from the heraldic tapestries in Fitzwilliam’s palace. In fact, his low-slung profile and arched back resembled a supersized snapping turtle I’d once seen in the Pike County millpond. Unlike those comically inoffensive turtles, Sirrahon had neatly folded away a pair of bat-like wings along the sides of his upper back. Running down the middle was a ridge of ten-foot high spinal scales that would have sent a Jurassic-era stegosaurus slinking away in shame.
Sirrahon’s four legs were mastodon-thick, with spade-shaped claws. One set of these claws closed around a medium-sized oak and gave it a twist, snapping the trunk off at ground level. Mesmerized, I followed the path of the giant claws until they placed the tree into the dragon’s mouth. With a crunch, it was gone.
The thought ran through my fear-addled mind: I suppose it’s too much to hope that Sirrahon’s a strict vegetarian.
The dragon’s eyes were the glittering yellow-white of xenon headlamps. Below the eyes was a hooked beak of a snout, full of sharp teeth and complete with sulfurous vapor billowing out of the nostrils like a pair of active hot springs. His long neck swung skyward. Then, moving much too quickly for anything so large, Sirrahon rose up on his hind legs.
A curse from one of my friends. Gasps from another. I didn’t see who had done what. It was too much to take in, until my mind could grope for some kind of yardstick to measure things against. With a shiver, I realized that Sirrahon’s body alone was the size of two railroad cars stacked end to end.
The dragon’s head shot out. With a snap, he crunched down one of Liam’s summoned thunderbirds in a puff of black feathers. An earth-shattering boom as he brought his front feet down again. A snort, followed by the accelerating chuff-chuff of an oncoming diesel engine.
“Dayna!” Galen grabbed me around my waist and slung me across his back like a sack of potatoes. “We must be elsewhere!”
The centaur’s hooves bit into the soft dirt as he sprang forward. I hung on with one arm, looked back over the wizard’s equine hindquarters.
Sirrahon’s jaws gaped impossibly wide. I looked up, right into the very cavern of nightmares, saw almost absently that the creature’s teeth ran all the way down his throat. The rumble of a volcanic explosion.
A cone of fire erupted from that horrible cavern as I held on to Galen for dear life.
Chapter Thirty-One
Damp or not, the woods behind us leapt into flame as Sirrahon’s fiery breath ignited the underbrush. Adrenaline pumping, I managed to lever myself up onto Galen’s back just as the centaur swerved to one side. I gulped as I looked to the rear. The hellish red of Sirrahon’s jet of fire moved to track us. High above, the creature’s baleful eyes shone down at us like searchlights.
“Faster, Galen!” I cried, as the dragon flexed its neck, and the molten cone of its breath moved ever closer. “He’s almost got us!”
The wizard said nothing. He bent into his full gallop, face red with exertion. His breath came out as tight, wheezing gasps. I got ready to jump. At this speed, I’d be lucky not to land and break an ankle. But I was slowing Galen down, and I wasn’t about to let him get toasted on my account.
Just as I was about to leap, I heard the dull crump of rock on bone. The dragon’s cone of breath shut off like water from a tap. Galen skidded to a stop and I scrambled off his back. We turned to see what had happened.
Shaw circled the dragon’s head, wings beating furiously. He held a stone the size of a steamer trunk in his leonine forepaws.
“Dost thou like the sting of rock, monster?” Sirrahon rubbed the top of his snout where the griffin had either lobbed or dropped a rocky payload as Shaw taunted him. “I have another taste of it here for you!”
The dragon’s head bobbed at the end of his sinuous neck. He snapped at the griffin, jaws closing inches away as Shaw bobbed and weaved. The griffin shot skywards as Sirrahon made a mighty lunge. My heart caught in my throat as I heard a crunch.
Shaw dropped away, leaving the dragon clutching only the rock in his jaws.
“Galen!” I shouted, “Can you hit that stone with something?”
“A target that size is foal’s play,” he said grimly. He flung his arm forward, releasing the ball of magical energy he’d kept spinning in his palm.
The glowing sphere sailed up along the dragon’s neck, disappearing against the creature’s bulk until it touched the stone. A fizt! as it detonated.
The rock Shaw had jammed into Sirrahon’s mouth exploded. Sharp fragments rained down around us. At least some were stone. Many were jagged remnants of the dragon’s teeth.
Sirrahon blinked, as if he wasn’t sure what had just happened.
Then he let out a roar that shook the leaves off any nearby trees that weren’t already ablaze.
Oh, great, I thought. We just pissed him off.
Instinctively, I ducked as the slithering sound came again. Galen danced back as the dragon’s telephone-pole sized tail sliced the air between us. The wizard shouted his next incantation over the din of smashed trees. The lightning bolt that shot from his fingertip glanced off the side of the dragon’s head, rocking it backwards and leaving a black scorch mark.
Shaw darted in again, slashing at Sirrahon’s neck with his talons and beak. The sound of chalk on a marble-hard surface echoed as the griffin’s attack did little more than attract the dragon’s attention for a moment. But it gave me an opening as Sirrahon turned away to snap at the retreating griffin.
My gun looked pitifully small in my hands as I assumed a shooter’s stance and took careful aim at the dragon’s eye. I’d tried this once before with the dragons that had attacked me and Galen in these very same woods. It was worth a try. Sirrahon’s near eye was a lot further away, but the fact that it was the size of a Cadillac’s hubcap made things easier.
I squeezed off a trio of shots. Two sparked against the creature’s stone-tough hide and whined off harmlessly. The third hit home. I didn’t see so much as a scuff mark on the clear scale that protected the eye, but the yellow iris pulsed and Sirrahon bellowed anew. Maybe I hadn’t done more than give it a good poke, but again, it was enough to get its attention.
Too much attention. My guts turned to jelly as the diesel throb of Sirrahon’s fire breath got going again.
Destry phased into existence off to my right. He reared, neighing wildly, silhouetting his black form against a cluster of burning trees. Sirrahon cut loose, smothering the pooka in dragon fire. Destry may have been an ethereal, but I hel
d my breath until Sirrahon let up. The mystical horse appeared, unharmed and phased into insubstantiality amidst the flames.
If this had been any other time, I might have laughed at Sirrahon’s puzzled expression. But the dragon ignored the pooka from then on, and decided to start crunching forward on all fours deeper into the Fayleene woods.
Liam stood in his way, looking like a child’s toy set before the fully grown monster. Before I could shout at him to get out of the way, the Fayleene’s antlers glowed with power again. The remaining thunderbird circled back into the fray and let out its keen whistle. With a CRACKOOM, a double-forked bolt of lightning stabbed from the clouds and hit Sirrahon in the chest. The dragon halted his forward charge and staggered for a moment.
Shaw, seeing his foe stagger, dove in to slice at the dragon’s head again.
But that was a feint. And our griffin fell for it.
With the quickness of a striking snake, Sirrahon whirled to one side, smacking the incoming griffin with his tail. Shaw tumbled in midair, stunned. The dragon caught him in one taloned fist. All I could see was the griffin’s dazed eagle head sticking out from the dragon’s cruel fist.
“Oh, dear God–” I choked out.
Sirrahon squeezed.
Shaw let out a heart-rending squawk. The crisp pop! of a two-by-four announced the snap of one of his ribs.
Liam’s eyes went blank as the thunderbird called down a second lightning strike. Galen called up a second energy sphere and hurled it at Sirrahon’s side. I emptied the remaining bullets in my gun. All of our blows made the creature flinch, but he refused to let go.
A second pop. Then a third.
“Mon dieu,” Destry’s voice whispered in my mind.
“Galen!” I cried, “Get Shaw out of there!”
The wizard hesitated. “If I do, then I won’t have the energy to get anyone else out of trouble.”
The Deer Prince's Murder: Book Two of 'Fantasy & Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 2) Page 20