“Your words, not mine.” Captain Daxos’ face split into a smile to mirror mine, and he bowed humbly.
I laughed as I stood and clapped the captain on the back. I was really getting to like People’s Counselor Danikel’s son. Though we’d only met two days ago, I could already see that we would get along splendidly. He was a simple man who took pride in doing his duty, serving his city, and carrying out whatever mission was given to him to the best of his ability. He would have made one hell of a firefighter back in Chicago, the sort of guy who made every firehouse a better place.
Once Captain Daxos had left, I spent a few minutes strapping on my padded undergarment, scale mail, and the sheath that held my fireman’s axe. Gathering up my pack and the ice shield, I strode from my room, down the hallway, and into the living area, where I found Arieste sitting on a couch munching a hard trail biscuit. She looked up and her face brightened as I entered the room.
“How are you feeling?” I asked as I sat beside her. Sergeant Dai handed me a trail biscuit with his usual eloquent grunt, and I took it with a nod of thanks.
“Better,” she said. “From what the captain tells me, I overextended my magical capabilities yesterday and rendered myself unconscious.”
“You saved all our asses,” I told her with a smile. “That ice bridge was fucking awesome, and it’s the only reason we got away from those ghoulins.”
“But I will have to be more careful with my use of magic in the future.” A shadow passed behind her eyes, and her face hardened as she looked down at her beautiful body. “It is still easy to forget the limitations of this human body.”
“It happens to be a body I enjoy quite a lot,” I said as I took her hand and squeezed it. “So, yes, I’d appreciate it if you kept it in good shape.”
My words brought a little smile to her face. “How are you?” she asked. “You exerted yourself a great deal as well yesterday. Any residual fatigue of your magic use?”
“Not even a little,” I replied and stretched my arms wide for emphasis. “A night of sleep did me a lot of good.” I felt no aches or pains, even from the long trek into Ironfast. Perhaps the magic had more restorative properties than I realized.
The door opened behind her and Irenya entered the living room. She hesitated at the sight of me sitting beside Arieste, but I saw a small smile toying at the corners of her lips, and she sashayed into the room with all the sultry elegance of a princess at a royal ball.
“Good morning, Captain Daxos,” she said with a pleasant grin for the captain. The smile turned into a little laugh as Captain Daxos blushed beet-red and mumbled a hasty greeting. She took a seat on the opposite side of me and gave Arieste a too-sweet smile. Ice glittered in Arieste’s eyes, and her grip on my hand tightened to near bone-crushing force.
“Looks like it’s time for us to be moving on,” I said as I stood and brushed the crumbs of trail biscuit from my lap. “If you ladies are up for it, I think we can be done with all this walking for now. A quick flight across Ironfast should get us to the Iron Keep where we can find the Circlet of Darksight.”
“And Vozaath?” asked Captain Daxos. “What of the demon?”
“If Vozaath’s out there, I’m sure it’s going to be coming for us,” I told him. “That display of magic from last night had to have gotten its attention. If not, Vozaath is definitely going to sense it the moment I use the magic to turn the women into dragons.”
Captain Daxos’ expression grew pensive. For a moment, he said nothing, and then finally asked. “And if Vozaath does not reveal itself?”
“Then we hunt the fucker down,” I said without hesitation.
Relief filled Captain Daxos’ eyes, and the tension faded from his posture.
“Look, I promised your father and the other Councilors I’d get rid of Vozaath for you,” I told him. “I was the one who opened the way into Ironfast, so I’m the one that has to deal with the demon trapped inside. I’m not going to leave your city facing such a threat. I need your help to defend Whitespire, so I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure Windwall is safe.”
“Thank you, Sir Ethan,” Captain Daxos said, and he gave me a deep bow from the waist. “My father was right when he said you were a man to be trusted.”
“I’ll do my best to prove him right.” I returned the bow. “Let’s go kick some demon ass.”
Captain Daxos and I took the lead as our little group strode through the litter-strewn halls and out the front of the huge stone building. As we walked, I used the Mark of the Guardian to feel for the presence of magic around me, but I came up with nothing. There wasn’t even a faint pulse of the dark power of the ghoulins or the bat-monster thing Captain Daxos had called an aswang back in the direction of the river. I couldn’t feel anything to either side or ahead of us, so I guessed that they hadn’t managed to cross the river.
So where had they gone? I could only hope they hadn’t found the way into Windwall. Once we were done with Vozaath, I determined, we were going to figure out how the ghoulins got into Ironfast. If Emroth knew a secret way into the city, it meant there could be another way to get out without having to climb back up the winding trails.
One problem at a time. First, we had a demon to deal with.
I strode to the middle of the broad highway with Arieste and Irenya beside me. Without hesitation, Arieste stripped out of her plain white cloth dress down to the thin shift she’d been wearing when I found her. As always, I was struck by the elegant gracefulness of her body. She was nearly as tall as me, with a willowy build and long legs that could have given Helen of Troy serious competition.
Irenya seemed to be looking at her with something of the same admiration glinting in her eyes. A little smile toyed at her full red lips as she studied the platinum-blonde woman from head to toe.
“Do you see what I see?” Nyvea sang in my mind.
There was no denying it. Irenya had looked at me the same way before, with the same hint of desire. A spark burned in her eyes as if she found herself now irresistibly attracted to Arieste.
But it was more than just attraction I sensed in Irenya. Though the two women were rivals, something had changed in her since last night. She seemed more relaxed around both Arieste and me, almost at ease. It was as if accepting to help us in our mission to save the humans had given her a place in our world.
With a smile, I pulled the white gemstone from my pocket and held it out to Arieste’s forehead. I caught a hint of anxiety in her eyes, but I guessed that it was probably the result of overexerting herself the previous day.
“You’ve got this,” I said with a reassuring grin.
She nodded, placed her hand atop mine, and closed her eyes.
I braced myself for the chilling shock as I reached for the ice magic flowing within me. The power surged through my veins in a freezing flood, and it flowed through my fingers into the white gemstone. A bright light filled the cavern around us as the gem began to glow, and it pushed back the shadows for fifty yards in every direction. The magic ripped through me as it was sucked through the gemstone into Arieste, and her form began to change.
Her lean face broadened to a white serpentine snout covered in sharp horns that glittered coldly in the light of the gemstone. Her pale skin hardened into icy scales, her hands and feet sharpened into taloned claws, and her limbs grew heavy with muscle. She fell forward onto all fours as her body stretched out into the hulking shape of a dragon. Leathery white wings snapped out from her ribs to beat at the air, and a long tail sprouted from the base of her spine.
I looked into those icy blue dragon eyes and smiled at the intelligence burning there. Arieste’s body may have transformed, but her mind was still in control. She let out a frost-edged whuff of her breath and shook her huge body.
“Ahhh,” she rumbled. “That feels wonderful.”
“My turn!” Irenya clapped and jumped up and down.
Arieste’s rumble deepened, and I heard the warning threat in her voice.
“Trust me, Ar
ieste,” I told the huge white dragon. “She is on our side.”
Suspicion flashed in the dragon’s blue eyes, but I didn’t back down. Arieste hadn’t been there last night, and she hadn’t heard the sincerity in Irenya’s voice when she agreed to help. She’d just have to trust that I knew what I was talking about.
I still hesitated before reaching for the ruby-red gemstone I’d taken from Riamod’s scaly chest. I wanted to believe Irenya told the truth last night when she agreed to help, but there was still a small bit of my brain that told me she couldn’t fully be trusted. It was just the wary suspicion that was part of every human being, the suspicion that had kept us alive and aware of threats since the beginning of mankind, but it took a little effort to ignore it.
Irenya was already stripping out of her red velvet dress, and then she stood in nothing but the sheer crimson shift I’d found her in. The gauzy fabric did little to hide her golden skin and mouth-watering curves, and I got more than an eyeful of her full breasts, rounded hips, and ample butt. The sight brought back memories of the previous night, and I felt a sudden stiffness in my trousers.
I forced myself to lift my gaze and meet her amber eyes. A little smile played on her lips as she read the desire no doubt written plainly in my expression, but it disappeared as I locked eyes with her. I searched her face to find any hint of deceit or any indication that would warn me not to trust her.
“Do it,” Nyvea said in my mind. “You can trust her in this much, at least.”
Her voice confirmed what my eyes told me. A new desire shone in Irenya’s gaze, and it was so much more than just physical attraction. She had awoken in her human body to find herself immediately surrounded by enemies, facing death, and then sworn into servitude to her captors. In her few days as a human, Arieste and I had been the closest thing she’d had to companions. To friends. Her dragon instincts might have longed for freedom, but the human part of her wanted the same thing every human wanted: to belong to something.
“Let’s do this,” I said as I stepped closer and pressed the gemstone to her chest. I was keenly aware of her ample breasts, and it took a superhuman effort to close my eyes and reach inside me for the fire magic coursing through my veins. A wave of burning heat surged within me, and I felt it sucked into the gemstone. I heard Arieste’s rumbling and Captain Daxos’ gasps of surprise as Irenya’s body transformed.
I opened my eyes and came face to face with an enormous red dragon, with two golden eyes staring fire into mine. I’d forgotten how massive Riamod was, easily five or six feet taller and ten to fifteen longer than Frosdar. But I wasn’t looking at Riamod. Instead, I saw the same fire sparkling in the dragon’s eyes as I’d seen in Irenya’s. It was the same glimmer of strength that had attracted me to her in the first place.
She let out a little whuff, which sent a puff of smoke blowing right into my face. I growled and waved my hands to clear the smoke away. A low laugh rumbled from the dragon’s huge throat, and it shook itself much the way Arieste had. Irenya took a few steps as if testing an unfamiliar body. Her red wings snapped out with enough force to rip out an entire corner of one stone building. When she shifted her massive bulk backward to get away from the crumbling stone, her huge spiked tail whipped two feet over the heads of Captain Daxos and his Blackguards. The Windwall men threw themselves to the ground just in time to avoid the return swipe.
“Irenya, stop moving!” I shouted. “You’re going to bring the whole city down.”
I thought I saw a hint of embarrassment sparkling in the golden eyes the red dragon fixed on me as she settled to her haunches. Arieste let out a rumbling laugh, and Irenya replied with a low growl.
“Let’s go,” I said quickly. I couldn’t have my two dragons fighting each other when there were bigger problems to face. “Captain Daxos, you’re with me on Irenya. Lieutenant, Sergeant, you’ll go with Arieste.”
The three Blackguards froze halfway to their feet, and nervous glances passed among them.
“Trust me, you’re going to love it!” I told them as I shoved the women’s dresses into their packs.
I strapped Arieste’s pack to one of her glittering white spikes, and then strode over to Irenya. As I approached, the red dragon knelt on her forelegs to allow me to climb onto her back. I took a seat on her long sinewy neck and motioned for the others to follow suit.
“They won’t bite,” I called. “Well, they won’t bite you.”
That did little to reassure them. Captain Daxos was the first to brave the dragons, but only after I leaned down from my seat on Irenya’s back to offer him a hand up. He scrambled up Irenya’s back and quickly settled behind the next row of spikes. Sergeant Dai gave a little grunt, then followed his captain’s example and clambered onto Arieste’s back. A grin actually broke the man’s usual stoic expression as he settled into place on her neck and studied the city from his new vantage point.
“By the Three, this is brilliant!” he said in a voice as deep and rumbling as grinding stone, and I realized that this was the first time that the sergeant had spoken on our trip.
Lieutenant Trosken seemed unable to bring himself to climb onto Arieste’s back. Captain Daxos’ orders and my cajoling did little to change his mind.
“Irenya, help him out, will you?” I whispered to the red dragon.
“With pleasure,” she rumbled.
Quick as a striking snake, her long neck darted forward and her teeth closed around Lieutenant Trosken’s chest. He cried out in fear, but she didn’t bite through his armor. Instead, she clamped her jaws down with just enough force to lift him off his feet and settle him onto Arieste’s back.
“Was that really necessary?” Captain Daxos said in a low voice.
“We’ve got demons and dragons to kill,” I said with a shrug. “We don’t really have time to wait for him to conquer his fears.”
Lieutenant Trosken clung to Arieste’s spikes as if for dear life, and his spine was as rigid as the spear strapped to his back. His eyes were closed and his lips moved in an endless stream of what I assumed were prayers to the goddesses.
“Let’s do this!” I shouted. “Irenya, let’s find that Iron Keep.”
I felt her enormous muscles bunch beneath me as she crouched, and then she leapt high into the air. Her massive red wings snapped out to the side, and she flapped them hard to gain altitude. I heard air gust behind me as Arieste took flight behind us, and within moments, the two dragons had cleared the stone buildings.
“Give us a light,” I told Irenya.
Crimson brilliance flared from her chest, and I felt the surge of power as she tapped into the fire magic coursing through her. A moment later, a pillar of fire burst from her mouth and filled the surrounding air with heat and light.
The flash of flames illuminated a marvelous sight. We hovered above Ironfast, and thousands of buildings rose up toward us like a forest of stone. From our vantage point twenty yards or so below the roof of the cavern, I could see the entire city laid out before us. Straight roads dissected Ironfast into neat squares, broken only by the Iron River cutting through the city behind us. The cavern was easily two hundred yards tall and stretched easily twenty or thirty miles across. Ironfast truly was a breathtaking marvel of ancient magic and stonemasonry.
I counted six heartbeats before Irenya summoned the magic again, and another bright pillar of fire blossomed in the darkness. The glow of the flames illuminated the city for a quarter-mile or so in every direction, and I saw thousands of tall stone buildings rising from the ground far below, but nothing that could be the Iron Keep.
“Any idea where the Iron Keep was located?” I asked Captain Daxos.
“Legends called it the heart of the city,” he said.
“Then that’s where we’re headed.” I raised my voice to shout to Irenya. “Head toward the center.”
My stomach leapt into my throat as she dropped suddenly and banked hard to the right. Without any winds to ride, she had to flap her wings hard to stay aloft. I heard Arieste
flying behind us and cast a glance over my shoulder. A smile spread Sergeant Dai’s broad face, but Lieutenant Trosken hadn’t yet opened his eyes.
“He’s not a fan of heights,” Captain Daxos told me with a grin.
“Odd thing, given his place on the Windwall,” I replied.
“It’s different when you have solid stone around you,” the captain said. “It’s nothing like this. Nothing at all.” His eyes sparkled with delight, and I could see he was loving every moment of the ride so far.
I turned my attention back to the way ahead and focused on trying to find the Iron Keep. It shouldn’t be too hard to find the tallest building in the city, especially one that was supposed to located in the heart of Ironfast. But we were kind of flying blind, and our only source of light came from Irenya’s blasts of fire and the gemstone in her chest. It felt like hurtling through a nightclub, with pillars of fire replacing the flashing strobe lights. We had to keep high enough above the city that Irenya and Arieste wouldn’t scrape the tops of the stone buildings, but also not so high we crashed into the rocky ceiling of the cavern.
Despite the darkness, sporadic light, and the uncertainty, I couldn’t help enjoying myself. It felt awesome to be riding a dragon again, especially one as powerful as Irenya. The wind of our passage whipped at my hair and set my cloak flapping, and I marveled at the power of the red dragon’s muscles as they contracted and relaxed beneath my legs. Laughter burst from my lips as we swooped, doved, and soared through the air.
Echoing laughter came from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and was shocked to see Lieutenant Trosken no longer frozen in fear. His eyes were wide, not in terror, but in utter delight. He was actually standing on Arieste’s neck like a surfer riding a board, and he waved one hand in the air while the other held onto one of the icy white spikes.
“Looks like the Lieutenant’s lost his fear quickly enough,” I shouted to Captain Daxos.
The captain turned around, and I saw him stiffen as he saw his lieutenant’s dangerous pose. His shout to the lieutenant was lost to the wind, but Sergeant Dai seemed to understand the message. He motioned to Lieutenant Trosken to take a seat, and after a long moment, the lieutenant complied.
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