The Legend of Vanx Malic: Book 02 - Dragon Isle

by M. R. Mathias

  At another junction of tunnels, Ootlin stopped and pointed to the passage that he should take. It was obvious by the expression of unease on his strange face that he wasn’t going to lead any farther.

  “Take the elixir now,” Ootlin said. His pale face caught the eerie red glow of the rocks and it made him look like some feral troll-beast covered with a film of blood. “Queen’s lair is but a short way. No junctions, no crossings.”

  Vanx got out the vial Olden Pak had given him and dripped two fat drops into the pup’s mouth. The pup began smacking and licking as if there were some pasty substance stuck on the roof of his mouth. It looked as if he were trying to scour the taste off with his tongue. Vanx found out why a few seconds later when he downed the rest of the vial’s contents. It was horrible-tasting, like rotten meat and bile, but almost instantly Vanx felt his body grow cool from the inside out. After a few moments the heat of the tunnels had disappeared entirely. The pup must have felt it too, for it had stopped its squirming. It was peering up out of the papoon with curious, almost eager eyes.

  Not one to dally in the moment, Vanx nodded his appreciation at Ootlin and started down the passage, trying to build up some sort of courage to face the island’s queen.

  The passage was short and relatively straight, leading right into a fantastical cavern that eclipsed Boondara’s wonders tenfold.

  Where the city cavern glowed a soft bluish-green, this cavern was all crimson, ruby, and menacing shadow. A river of cherry-hot magma churned and swirled slowly along the far end of the space. It bubbled and steamed across the base of one of the cavern walls and its glow served to bathe the area in bloody light. Stalagma, long and jagged, jutted up and dangled from overhead, throwing long, wicked shadows across every surface of the gigantic area. The cavern itself elbowed away out of sight to Vanx’s right, and he could sense the Fire Queen’s presence back there. He was thankful that she hadn’t been able to see him enter, for she would have surely ended him while he stood gawking.

  What was more striking than the cavern, or the fact that he was in it, was the glittering hoard of treasure piled at the crook of the elbow. A dozen or more chests of gold and silver coins lay open or broken, the contents spilled into a pile with which a man could fill a wagon cart. There were ornately carved ornaments and jewels, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, and bigger diamonds, along with a polished steel blade and a gold-chased breastplate fit for a king. There were all sorts of goblets, bowls, and jewelry, too. All of this reflected the glowing magma in a sinister, yet glorious, manner. Some wooden planks, and what might have been part of a ship mast, charred away at the ends, were buried under the pile. It looked to Vanx as if a great dragon had latched on to part of a treasure ship with her claw and brought the whole load back to her domain.

  Vanx gulped. Even though wealth and riches were not things he longed to possess, he felt the magnitude of power and influence one could buy with all the treasure lying there. Just the sight of it was already taking his thoughts off of his task. He started toward the heap, but after only three long strides, just enough to be clear of the passage, Pyra’s great head loomed down from around the bend.

  “Who dares trespass in my lair?” a voice that was surprisingly Zythian, but only in the cerebral sense, sounded. The part of the voice Vanx could actually hear was growling and grinding, but his mind picked up her meaning in both the human and the old Zythian languages, as well as others he didn’t quite fully grasp. He felt as if this were but the display of a tiny droplet in the sea of magical power the ancient wyrm possessed. “Grovel to the gods you call upon, fool,” she went on. “I’m about to roast you from your bones. No one dares to take from my hoard without feeling the heat of my wrath.”

  Vanx was surprisingly calm. His mind had concluded that he had no real defense here. Fear was a pointless emotion at this point. If the dragon so much as sneezed, he was ash. It was that simple. Remembering the goddess’s suggestion, and seeing how the great wyrm coveted her pile of treasure, Vanx took a chance and responded.

  “I care naught for your impressive hoard, oh mighty Dragon Queen,” Vanx said, his voice bathed in sincere reverence. “I only seek to add to its value with an item worth far more to one such as yourself than mere wealth.”

  Pyra brought her great horned head down closer, as if to inspect him. “What is this?” She cocked her gaze and gave him a menacing, yet curious, look. “What is this you wish to give me?”

  “It is a magical stone,” Vanx told her. “’Tis a powerful item to possess, even for one such as you.” He cautiously reached under the papoon, into his collar, and pulled forth the Blood Stone, still dangling on the chain he had taken from Sir Earlin’s corpse back at the beach.

  Pyra started to draw in a long, slow breath. As she did, she studied the Blood Stone with her eyes and other powerful senses far beyond Vanx’s understanding.

  “I think I’ll just roast you and take that pretty trinket from the ashes,” she said when her lungs were full.

  “I suppose you could do that,” Vanx said, trying to mask the fear growing inside him. The pup wasn’t afraid, though. It lurched its little head and snarled at the dragon, trying unsuccessfully to get free of the papoon. It let loose a peal of sharp, yipping barks. Despite his unease, Vanx couldn’t help but chuckle at the futile protective gesture. He decided then and there that, if he survived this ordeal, he would feed his little guardian meat and gravy at every chance he got.

  Pyra growled out a laugh, too. Short jets of flame and thick clouds of fetid brimstone smoke curled from her cavernous nostrils and her eyes seemed to roll in sarcasm at the pup’s warning.

  “He wishes to warn me from harming you with his terrifying bay.” The dragon’s mirth slowly subsided. “Tell me why I should spare you. Why is it you came here?”

  “This stone can be used to fill your belly with the most delicious of meats, oh mighty one. Is your fare not as boring as the winter is long? I can show you how.” Vanx spoke quickly, feeling like a hawker trying to sell his ware before the customer strode past, or in Vanx’s case, before the customer grew impatient and scorched him to cinders.

  “Let me ask you something.” She was listening intently now, and Vanx went on with a little more confidence. “Have you ever feasted on the succulent flesh of the beast known as the ogre? No? Well let me tell you just how huge and delicious they can…”

  Ogres are full of menace,

  ogres are full of rage.

  Once a man was fool enough

  to put one in a cage.

  – a song from Dyntalla

  Zeezle thought he’d hamstrung the hulking monster behind him, but his blade hadn’t cut deep enough. The ogre found its feet again and was back on the attack. Zeezle was beginning to wonder why he had chosen to stay and fight them. This one, as with the last few he’d dispatched, was taking its toll on his battle-worn body. The Zythian was in a fix now, he knew. By mistaking his last blow as a crippling one, then sprinting past the beast to try to aid one of Prince Russet’s fallen knights, he’d put himself between a rock and a hard place, or in this case between a crumbling block wall and an angry ogre over three times his size.

  Spinning to dodge a blow that he felt more than saw coming, he dropped into a roll. His keen senses were dead on. He heard the powerful whooshing of air beside his body as the ogre’s weapon barely missed its mark. The creature was using the leg of one of its fallen companions and the impact of the severed limb into the blood-soaked bailey yard was a heavy, wet thud. The bits of blood and flesh that splattered forth smelled of rot and decay.

  It’s not as foul as that blasted valley full of dragon shit, he told himself as he took advantage of the ogre’s great size and darted between its legs into another diving roll. He rose to a knee and spun on it, making a low slicing-sweep with his weapon. The Zythian swung it as though he would a cutting axe, and this time his sword bit deeper. He severed the tendon of the beast’s uninjured leg, and the ogre jerked up and twisted away just as the steel
hit bone. Zeezle’s long, thin blade broke near the hilt with a snap, pushing the Zythian’s level of frustration to its limit. He’d saved the wages from twenty years of working in his family’s farm to buy that weapon. Now it was ruined.

  Not far away, an embattled haulkatten gave out a pain-filled roar as it took a crippling blow. The rider’s scream came next, but was cut short when he was crushed by the weight of his own mount.

  Dodging the big ogre’s flailing arms as it fell to the ground, Zeezle darted to where the fallen knight had been. All he found was a bloody mash of armor and flesh. The fallen knight had been stomped into a bloody pulp, armor and all.

  A head-sized chunk of stone came sailing in and took him in the hip while he was focused on the knight’s corpse. The blow was brutal and it took him to the ground and sent a fiery pain rushing through his body. He was sure his pelvis, or at least his thigh bone, had been shattered. With gritted teeth and all the willpower he could muster, he crab-crawled on hands and feet toward the line of kingdom soldiers that he hoped could protect him.

  “There!” a man shouted. “I see the Zythian, and…” The way he stopped caused Zeezle to turn. Coming up quickly behind him, holding a huge piece of the block wall over his head, was another ogre.

  “Cover the yellow eye, all of you who can!” a soldier yelled.

  The ogre caught up with the fallen Zythian just as a half-dozen arrows sprouted from its chest. The battle-lusting monster didn’t even notice them as it brought the big chunk of stone down at Zeezle from directly overhead. Zeezle tried to move away all the faster, but saw the soldiers squint and turn their heads away to avoid seeing the crushing impact.

  A pikeman, fighting from the part of the wall that still stood, made a remarkable throw with his long-shafted weapon. He missed the ogre’s body, but the spear struck deep into the earth before its striding legs and tripped the beast. Zeezle didn’t escape further injury, but the pulverizing piece of masonry came down just the breadth of a frog’s hair beyond him, missing him completely.

  A bone-jarring knee caught him between his shoulder blades, emptying his lungs of air, just before an ankle bone cracked into his temple and mashed his head against the broken block that had almost crushed him. The scrambling ogre crawled up on him. He couldn’t find a way to draw breath, much less get away. Within moments, the pain from his injuries and the lack of air carried him into a dark oblivion.

  Zeezle woke, not much later, lying face up under the huddling forms of an apprentice healer and the worried-looking Prince of Parydon.

  “I thought we’d lost you,” Russet Oakarm said with a forced grin. Then to a group of soldiers standing nearby he barked, “Get him into the stronghold and wake up that blasted wizard.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Zeezle heard two men respond in perfect unison, but before he could sense anything else he was blanketed by foggy blackness once again.

  Prince Russet surveyed the practice-yard-turned-battlefield. It was one of three places where the ogres continued to breach the stronghold’s last protective wall. Several of the wild creatures had actually made it into the outbuildings and one into the kitchens. Those intruders had been swiftly dealt with by the soldiers assigned to those areas, but they would be tested even more, and far too soon. The battle wasn’t going well, and no one, not even the old wizard, could figure out what it was that kept driving the ogres at them. They all knew that Vanx had taken the Blood Stone from Sir Earlin’s charred corpse back on Dragon Isle, which meant that it was still there with him, or in the belly of one of those dragons. Quazar didn’t think that the lingering draw of the stone’s magic could be so potent as to warrant a full-scale attack, not from these mindless savages. Nor did he offer an explanation as to why it was still happening.

  Hope had surged with yesterday’s tide as a ship carrying another, equally capable, member of Quazar’s order arrived. The hope rolled out with the tide as well, as neither of the two could come up with a solution to the dilemma. At least the two wizards could relieve each other. One could rest and replenish his energy, as well as tend to the healing of the more grievous wounds, while the other fought.

  Also on that ship was the Duchess Gallarain, Gallarael’s mother. She was at first a typical frantic, worried mother; then she saw what Gallarael had become. Only the sharpened tip of a guard’s long pike had kept the slick black-skinned thing from clawing her to ribbons. Now the duchess was but another of the growing number of the bedridden. Her grief and guilt over her daughter, and all the men who had died or been injured trying to save her, was so great as to curl her into a ball that had not yet, or might not ever, unclench itself.

  Turning to the group of soldiers fighting in the yard, the prince gave the order for them to clear away from the kettles. Then he looked up at the windows along the stronghold wall.

  The soldiers below broke and ran, retreating to a place just out of the splashing range of the treacherous liquid. There they formed up behind a row of pikemen and archers whose sole purpose was to make sure the ogres didn’t get past that point.

  “Pour!” a commander shouted just as soon as all of the men were clear of the target area.

  Out of three of the four designated windows, hot, honey-colored oil came splashing down on the wild-eyed, blood-lusting beasts who had filled the space the soldiers had just vacated.

  Flaming arrows came arcing in from the wall top and a great booming concussion sounded as all the volatile liquid caught fire at once. It wasn’t only the ogres who suffered this time, though. Bright yellow flames licked out of the window where the fourth kettle crew was stationed. Screams of men and beasts alike filled the air. A man, on fire from head to foot, dove screaming out of a window and disappeared into the knot of writhing bodies below. Then, all of that was drowned out by the thunderous clap of an explosion, and a shower of shattered bricks and mortar rained over them.

  “By all the gods of men!” a soldier gasped. “They’ve got magic.”

  “Hold your tongue and defend the breach,” Prince Russet yelled over the ensuing chaos. It was a futile command, for the ground below the massive hole in the stronghold wall was a roiling hell of an inferno.

  “The kettle never poured over,” a captain reassured his men loudly. “The blasted thing got too hot, or corroded through at the bottom.” He cupped his hands to his mouth to make sure that as many heard as possible. “The oil combusted, men! There’s no other magic save for our own. They have no magic.”

  “Speaking of magic,” Prince Russet called over to the commander, “where’s that blasted wizard?”

  “Which one?” the commander asked back, snatching a passing soldier by the sleeve so that he could send him running with the prince’s next command.

  “Orphas! Quazar! It doesn’t matter!” the prince screamed as he drew his own sword. “One of them better get here soon. We are in it to our necks.”

  Not waiting to see if the soldier got the message right, Prince Russet charged into the slackening flames to help his men. Already he could see ogres clawing their way into the stronghold through the hole the explosion had created. These weren’t the ogres who’d been doused, either. These were fresh beasts, the smaller ones that had been holding back. From what Prince Russet saw before the roiling black smoke filled his eyes, there were a lot of them, more than enough to storm the stronghold and do irreparable harm. He had to make a decision then. His father, the king, was in danger.

  With much reluctance in his voice he yelled out with all the power his choking lungs could muster. “To your king! Defend your king!” He knew full well that without the experienced elite guards fighting here the defense would soon be broken. His only hope was that one of the wizards would arrive soon; otherwise the ogres would establish a way into the stronghold and be able to hold it. If that was allowed to happen, the battle, save for the dying, would be all but over.

  Zeezle was being bounced along on a travois by two straining young boys who could barely manage his light weight. He remembered drinking
the white-haired wizard’s foul potion and feeling it course through his body, and then the curious look on the other wizard’s face, the one whose chrome skull cap seemed impossibly tight. He blacked out again soon. Now, he heard a woman sobbing, and after another female called out her title, he rolled from the travois to his feet, startling the two boys carrying him into a wide-eyed fear.

  “Bahhh!” He lurched at one of them with a wild, ferocious snap. He laughed, despite the deep pain he was feeling all over. Both boys scurried away, squeaking like frightened mice.

  He followed the insistent whimpering to a door situated down a long hallway. He harrumphed to warn anyone inside that he was about to enter, and then proceeded in.

  “What is the meaning . . ?” A handmaiden’s fat old cheeks and neck jiggled before she froze in shock at the sight of the yellow-eyed heathen walking toward her. She started to scream, but a shifting on the bed turned her eyes and stopped her.

  Duchess Gallarain had unfolded her body and was attempting to sit up at the edge of the mattress. Zeezle saw that she wanted to speak, but was searching for the right words, so he waited. He was curious to see the woman whose charms, or charm, had enraptured Vanx and started all this mess. Finally, she wiped her face and met his amber eyes. “Was he your kin?”

  Before he could answer, the entire stronghold shook with an explosion. Moments after that, smoke rolled through the hallway, as did terrified screams of fear and agony. Through the din, Zeezle could hear that the ogres had finally gotten inside.

  A dragon hunts the sky and earth.

  They even hunt the seas.

  What does a dragon hunt my friend?

  Why anything it pleases.

  – Dragon’s song

  By the time Quazar reached the soldiers at the newest breach, it was too late. Even with him and his counterpart, Orphas, and their combined power, they couldn’t push the intruders back out of the stronghold proper.