by Jeff Minerd
The
Wizard’s Daughter
Also by Jeff Minerd
The Sky Riders of Etherium
The Sailweaver’s Son
The Wizard’s Daughter
THE SKY RIDERS OF ETHERIUM
The
Wizard’s
Daughter
By
Jeff Minerd
SILVER LEAF BOOKS LLC
HOLLISTON, MASSACHUSETTS
THE WIZARD’S DAUGHTER
Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Minerd
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.
Printed and bound in the United States. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the Web—without the express written consent of Silver Leaf Books, LLC.
The Silver Leaf Books logo is a registered trademarks of Silver Leaf Books, LLC.
All Silver Leaf Books characters, character names, and the distinctive likeness thereof are trademarks of Silver Leaf Books, LLC.
Cover Art by Silviya Yordanova.
First printing September 2018
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN # 978-1-60975-227-9
ISBN (eBook) # 978-1-60975-228-6
LCCN # 2018946435
Silver Leaf Books, LLC
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Visit our web site at www.SilverLeafBooks.com
To my parents,
Timothy and Geraldine Minerd.
Acknowledgements
A lot of people helped me with The Wizard’s Daughter, and I’m grateful.
Thanks to Kathy Salecki for her support and advice, including pointing out the book needed an epilogue to balance the prologue I’d written. (I’d totally missed that!) Thanks to my sister, Laura Minerd-Ruffino, and my parents Geraldine and Timothy Minerd, who in addition to being tireless supporters and volunteer publicists also gave me helpful feedback. Thanks to my brother-in-law Chuck Ruffino for this thoughtful and sometimes humorous comments. My writer friends Nora Bradbury-Haehl and Christine Adamo also gave me valuable suggestions and advice, as did Melody Russo. Finally, a special thanks to Debi Mansour. She read an early draft, and over the course of several conversations she helped me improve key elements and scenes and make this a much better book.
The
Wizard’s Daughter
PROLOGUE
It was a lookout, of course, who saw them first.
“Dragons!” he called from his position atop the mainmast. “Three of ‘em. Two points off the starboard bow. Elevation near ten thousand feet.”
There was a flurry of activity aboard the huge airship. An alarm bell clanged. Officers shouted orders. Men scrambled up into the rigging to adjust the enormous, wing-like sails in case the captain called for a course change. On the main deck, gun crews assembled at the bronze cannons whose gleaming barrels pointed out at the sky. Below decks, the cannoneers threw open the gun ports and with a noisy rumble ran out the guns. Everywhere, men took up positions with buckets of sand at the ready, prepared to smother dragonfire if necessary.
Admiral Adamus Strake, head of the royal fleet and captain of the flagship Dragonbane, stood at a command deck rail and studied the creatures through his spyglass. A large female, flanked by two smaller males. This far north, and with fall’s chilly bite in the wind, he’d expected them to be polar dragons, heading for their wintering grounds further south. But these dragons had the bright red scales and glittering golden bellies of dragons from the east, from someplace where the mountains spewed fire and ash. What could they be doing so far from home? And where were they going? Strake gauged their direction, using the far-off tips of the mountains of Frost as a reference point among all the clouds and empty sky. He checked his compass. If the dragons remained on their current course, they would reach the Highspire Mountains in a few days.
That was bad.
The Highspire Mountains were home, the main mountain chain in the Kingdom of Spire. More than two hundred and fifty thousand souls lived there, most in small villages with no defense against a dragon attack. Even the capital city of Selestria, with its castle and high stone walls and constant roving guard of battleships like the Dragonbane, could suffer serious casualties at the hands of three dragons. Especially if taken by surprise, at night, as dragons tended to do.
“Shall we engage ‘em, admiral?” asked Strake’s first lieutenant, a tall woman with close-cropped blonde hair. She stood at his side, squinting at the creatures through her own spyglass.
Strake’s weather-beaten face, crisscrossed and pockmarked with old burn scars, took on a solemn expression. He sighed. “I guess we’ll have to.”
Unlike his predecessor, the notorious Admiral Scud, Strake took no pleasure in killing dragons. He always thrilled to see them. They were such beautiful creatures, so perfectly formed. Ultimate predators. The perfect flying and fighting machines. Still, you couldn’t allow the beasts to fly into populated areas, if you could help it. A single stray dragon could level a village and eat all its livestock in the time it took most people to finish their breakfast. That’s why battleships of the royal fleet spent so much time on dragon patrols.
Another reason Strake didn’t want to engage the dragons was his diplomatic mission to the Kingdom of Frost in the north. A dragon fight would mar the looks of his ship. First impressions were important on diplomatic missions, Strake knew. He wanted to project an image of wealth and strength. He’d had the ship scrubbed and polished from top to bottom. The magnificent Dragonbane with its five tall masts and acres of billowing silvery sails would look much less impressive if it were to come limping up to the capital city of Frost with its sails in tatters and all its polished wood scratched and scorched. Still, there was no avoiding it.
“Prepare for action!” Strake bellowed. “Fire up the props and accelerate to attack speed!” His voice carried clearly from the bow to the stern to the tip of the tallest mast.
In the belly of the airship, engineers cranked open throttle valves that channeled streams of fresh fuel to the boilers. The ship had been recently modified to use the new fuel, a flammable gas, instead of coal. The four massive propellers at the ship’s stern churned as it accelerated. Steam billowed from vents on the underside.
A small, four-man messenger ship was launched from the deck. The men on that ship had orders to carry news of the dragon sighting back to airfleet headquarters on Selemont.
“Straight at ‘em!” Strake ordered. This was the standard tactic for fighting dragons. The creatures would respond to the maneuver as they would to a challenge from another dragon or large flying creature—by flying straight at the ship in return, aiming for the carved dragon figurehead at the bow. The typical dragon of Etherium was about as smart as a bear, and they attacked as a bear would attack. Or, to be more accurate, they attacked as an insane homicidal bear with unresolved anger issues would attack—hurling themselves maniacally through the air, talons outstretched seeking blood, jaws gaping and roaring, spitting malevolence and fire—and then biting and burning, ripping and rending, and thoroughly squashing and smashing every living and non-living thing within reach.
The red dragons with the golden bellies turned and flew
straight at the battleship as expected. The large female in the lead, a male off each wingtip. However, very shortly, these dragons were about to do something completely unexpected. A number of things, actually.
When the battleship closed to within two-hundred yards of the creatures, Strake ordered the ship hard about to port. The steeringman spun the wheel, the massive rudder turned, the fluttering sails were angled and trimmed, and the ship turned sharply to port, presenting the cannons all along its starboard side to the trio of dragons. Royal cannoneers train and train again until they are able to hit a dragon on the fly at two hundred yards as easily as most people can spit and hit their own shoe.
“Fire!” Strake shouted.
As one, the cannons flashed and roared, spewing huge clouds of smoke and bucking backward. The ship shuddered, beams creaking with strain.
And the strangest thing happened.
The moment the cannons flashed, the dragons dodged and dispersed, scattering evasively. The shots passed through empty space where dragon flesh had been only a split-second before.
Strake blinked, stunned. Unsure he’d seen what he’d actually seen.
The dragons had dodged at exactly the right moment. The cannoneers had missed.
Royal cannoneers rarely miss.
Dragons don’t dodge like that.
And now something even stranger was happening. Instead of regrouping, the dragons split up. One flew at the ship from the portside. Another came at them to starboard. And a third, one of the males, took off after the messenger ship. After the messenger ship! Dragons never attacked messenger ships. They were too small to be perceived as a threat. Strake gripped the command deck rail with white knuckles. The men in the messenger ship, the men he’d ordered there, stood no chance against a dragon attack.
The cannoneers were so flabbergasted by their misses and the dragons’ odd behavior that several crews forgot to reload until Strake shouted the order. There was nothing he could do about the messenger ship. He needed to concentrate on saving his own ship now. To his dismay, the dragons were no longer flying straight at him. They spiraled and zagged erratically, trying to evade more cannon shot. Strake’s mind raced. If these dragons were somehow intelligent enough to avoid cannons—to know to dodge in that split-second between the cannon flash and the arrival of the ball, to know to zig and zag as they approached—then his cannoneers could no longer fire in unison. The shots needed to be less predictable.
“Do not fire together!” he ordered. “Fire at will!”
And by wind and weather, hit something this time, his mind added.
The cannons cracked like thunder. The sound of each shot rang in Strake’s ears. The ship shuddered, bobbed, and rolled on the wind. The sails chattered.
They got one! The male approaching from portside. A shot straight through the heart. There was a spray of blood, and his wings crumpled and folded. He fell spinning toward the blanket of clouds that covered the surface of Etherium far below.
Several shots from the starboard batteries pierced the wings of the female dragon as she approached. But the small clean holes they made in the webbing of her wings barely slowed her down. When she was fifty yards from the ship—and the cannoneers furiously reloading—she dove.
And disappeared.
“Where did she go?” men shouted to each other. “Where is she?” “Do you see her?”
Men rushed to the rails and looked over the side. The sky above and below was empty.
“Where in blazes is she?” Strake yelled. But he was afraid he knew the answer.
The ship’s steering wheel gave a sudden spin, sending the steeringman sprawling to the deck. From underneath the ship, there came the sound of wood being splintered by massive jaws.
Men shouted from the aft deck railing. “The rudder! She’s chewing the rudder!”
“She’s underneath the ship!” the first lieutenant shouted, bewildered. The stern dipped as if a heavy weight had attached itself to the rear of the ship. Strake could imagine the dragon, anchored upside down to the belly of his ship by her talons, attacking the rudder. More sounds of wood being rent and torn. The ship’s steering wheel spun loosely.
“She’s taken out our steering,” the first lieutenant gasped. “We’re dead in the air.”
Strake strode to the wheel and gave it an experimental turn. He could feel there was no longer any rudder attached below. It boggled the mind! One’s rudder was of course a prime target when battling another ship. Losing it meant you could no longer steer, were at the mercy of the currents and your enemy. But for a dragon to take out a rudder? They didn’t know how to do that. Their animal minds couldn’t conceive of doing something like that! Strake couldn’t have been any more astounded if the dragon had landed on his deck and politely challenged him to a game of chess.
“Crossbows, spears, and shields, all hands!” Strake shouted. “We’ll be at close quarters soon!”
Men scrambled to tie up the cannons. Some grabbed up spears and fire-resistant shields from racks. Others furiously cocked and loaded crossbows.
With a frenzied whooshing of wings, the dragon flipped herself from underneath the ship onto the command deck. She was larger and heavier than an elephant. She spread her wings and roared. The ship lurched and rolled. To their credit, the airmen aboard the Dragonbane kept their feet. Strake could smell the dragon’s breath now, a horrible acrid smell that watered the eyes. He shouted for his men to aim at the eyes of the beast, but he had little hope for his ship or his men now. Once you let a dragon get onto the deck of your ship, you were as good as toast. Your cannons were useless. You had only toys to fight with.
And the dragon had fire.
The men fired crossbows and hurled spears. Most bounced off the dragon’s armored scales. A few hit and stuck, but to no effect. One crossbow bolt stuck in the corner of the dragon’s left eye, but at a shallow angle, not deep enough to reach the brain. Only enough to make her roar even more furiously. Her chest swelled with a huge breath. In one convulsive movement, she clamped down her mouth, striking sparks with her teeth, and expelled an awful-smelling, viscous, flammable fluid through her clenched teeth and nostrils. It became a spray of sticky fire.
Gobbets of fire flew and stuck everywhere—to the deck, to the masts, to the crew. Men rolled on the deck to extinguish themselves. Others heaved buckets of sand to smother the flames. Men tripped and fell over each other. They scrabbled over the pitching deck trying to retrieve dropped weapons. The dragon spewed fire again, then lashed out with her tail and talons, and what little order remained aboard the ship gave way to mayhem and madness. There was nothing but screams and smoke, the tearing of wood and flesh. The dragon’s jaws dripped slime and flame. Strake drew his sword and charged through the confusion, straight at the dragon, calling for his men to join him. The beast’s armored tail smacked him in the head and sent him skidding across the deck.
He had one thought before losing consciousness.
No! Please! Not again…
When Strake awoke, he found himself staring into the murderous eyes of a dragon. Each eye was the size of a bowling ball, the irises a dazzling gold flecked with green, the black pupils vertical slits that opened onto a nightmare. The dragon’s face was a few feet from his. It was the female. The male’s face hovered nearby. They stank. Strake squirmed, and found he was bound from chest to knees by the tight grip of a dragon’s talons. He couldn’t move at all. He could just breathe…if he inhaled shallowly.
He craned his head around. The dragons were perched on the deck of his ship. What he could see of it was blackened and smoldering. He didn’t see any living men. He could only hope some had escaped by parachute. Sky rider parachutes are cunningly built. In the buoyant atmosphere of Etherium, they can keep a man aloft indefinitely. And they’re equipped with toggles for steering.
None of your men escaped. My dragons saw to that. I’m terribly sorry.
Strake heard the voice inside his head. But somehow it s
eemed to be coming from the dragon’s eyes.
I had to reward them for the work they’d done. And let them sate their anger for the one you killed. And they so love human flesh. You know how it is with dragons.
Strake blinked. It was said that some dragons could communicate with each other telepathically. But he’d never heard of dragons communicating with humans in this way. And he’d certainly never heard of dragons being able to channel the telepathic speech of a human, which is what seemed to be happening now.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Come meet me…the voice said, and the dragons leapt into the air.
ONE
Brieze’s mother was acting strange. She’d been moping and sighing around the wizard’s house all day, doing dumb things. She’d left her hairbrush on the stairs of all places, where Brieze had nearly tripped over it and broken her neck, and she’d forgotten to feed the wizard’s exotic birds, which squawked hungrily from their cages in the parlor. Brieze was pretty sure her mother’s state of mind had something to do with Tobias the handyman. The two had stopped talking to each other, and Tobias was moping around the house too.
Her mother had wandered outside to the wide front lawn that stretched to the edge of the wizard’s floating island. Brieze kept an eye on her from an upstairs window as she played chess with the wizard. The wizard took a long time making his moves, and she went to the window and watched while she waited.
Now her mother was doing more dumb things. She wasn’t wearing a cloak, even though the fall chill outside hinted strongly of the winter to come, and she was standing much too close to the island’s edge, especially for such a windy day. And it was hard for Brieze to tell at this distance, but she didn’t seem to be wearing a parachute pack, which was not just dumb but dangerous.