Kings, Queens, Heroes, & Fools

by M. R. Mathias

  “Scoundrels like Captain Trant here are always trying to make a profit off of a poor fellow,” one of the reluctant losers smarted as he started adding his coins to his fellow’s pile.

  “The man drank wine from a golden goblet this night, and he fancies himself poor,” Trant shot back.

  “The miners and smiths you so desperately need are all spending this night under a Dakaneese whip,” Hyden reminded them. “Don’t you forget it.” After a beat his scowl turned into a grin. “Shall we try four?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Flick stood, with a long brass looking tube to his eye, watching from the prow of the zard ship Slither as the Seawander eased out of the bay of Salazar under the power of its water mage. The hood of Flick’s plain black robe had blown back with the breeze, revealing his slick white-skinned head. He was glad to have the ship in his sights. He had used a dozen sparrows in the last few weeks keeping track of their location, and the cage was nearly empty. Each time he cast the spell to find the locating stone that was hidden aboard the Seawander he had to drink fresh sparrow’s blood. He had no idea if he would be able to obtain more of the birds from the island. If he lost sight of them again it could become a problem.

  “Keep us well behind,” he told Slake, the sarzard captain of the ship. “But don’t lose them.” He handed the telescope back to the glittery green scaled lizard-man.

  The morning was bright and Flick pulled his hood back over his head to keep the sun from burning his scalp.

  Down below, Drolz and Varch, Flick’s two breed giant fighters, were snoring away. The whole ship vibrated with the irregular rumbles. The two primitive half-breeds were so big that they had to have special hammocks made to sleep in. They had to stay on separate sides of the ship too, otherwise it would list with their weight. Both were well over eight feet tall and together they weighed more than a wagon load of granite blocks.

  Flick was glad that this would be over in a few more days. One of Slake’s human crewmen had been sent to the inn called The Sword of Salt to spy on the hawk-man’s party. The dwarf and the Wildermont soldier had been overheard saying that the island they were searching for was only four days south of Salazar. Flick hoped that it was so. If they lost the Seawander, and ran out of sparrows, he would be forced to go skulking back to Queen Shaella looking like an incompetent fool. He didn’t want that to happen. He didn’t want to kill Hyden Skyler either, but she had ordered him to do so. Flick had become Gerard Skyler’s friend during the days of planning the theft of the dragon egg. It had been Flick who’d rowed Gerard through the marsh to the Dragon Spire. To kill his friend’s brother would be hard, but he would do it. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he knew that he would do anything Queen Shaella asked him to.

  ***

  Bzorch, the lord of Locar, was thinking deeply.

  In a recent visit, Queen Shaella had told the breed giant that he could no longer have human slaves pulling his wagon-chair about the city. She told him he could no longer have human slaves at all. He didn’t dare continue, but his cousin, Cozchin was trying to explain to him that, if he paid the humans to pull him about Locar, they wouldn’t be slaves: they would be employees. Bzorch wasn’t sure if Queen Shaella would approve. As much as he was growing to dislike her and her skeeks, he was still afraid of her considerable power. Tempting her wrath might jeopardize the little empire he was building just across the river from Castlemont.

  Before the great bridge to Wildermont was destroyed, Locar had been the main center of land trade for Westland and most of the continent. Now, it was the one civilized place for the breed giants to live. Only a few hundred of their kind had chosen to remain in Westland. Men inhabited the city of Locar too, but the zard stayed well away. There was a base sort of revulsion there. The zard hated the breed almost as much as the breed hated the zard. If not for Queen Shaella’s demand that they leave each other alone, Bzorch would have had zard-men pulling his wagon long ago.

  Sitting in a big wooden throne in the lobby of a commandeered manor, Bzorch was contemplating why his kinsman, Vachen, had recently crossed the river to fight with the skeeks against the Valleyans. He had already dismissed the idea of having men pull his wagon chair around. As usual, Cozchin was thinking a few moments behind him.

  “Is he going to live?” Bzorch asked as he rose to his feet.

  The question threw Cozchin off for a few moments because he was still turning arguments for keeping the human wagon team in place through his primitive mind.

  “Vachen?” the bewildered brute asked.

  Bzorch was nearly ten feet tall, and as intimidating as a breed giant could be. He was the alpha of his kind and exuded dominance. The title that Queen Shaella had bestowed upon him, for his help destroying the bridge to the east, had little to do with the firm control he asserted over his people. Cozchin, at just over eight feet tall, was trembling as he looked up to meet his brooding lord’s gaze.

  “Yes, Vachen!” Bzorch snapped. His one, long caterpillar-like eyebrow formed a sharp ’V‘ over his deeply set eyes. One of his lower fangs was jutting up over his upper lip when he wrinkled his snout into a snarl.

  Cozchin took a reflexive step back and spoke more quickly than he would have liked. “Lost his arm. He swears that the sword that wounded him was the same sword that old King Balton used to banish us.”

  “The rumors are true then,” growled Bzorch. “Shaella said Ironspike found an heir.” He started striding back and forth before his wooden throne while he continued to think. If he could capture the sword and its wielder he could increase his favor tenfold. If he presented Ironspike to the Dragon Queen, he was quite sure she would let him hand-pick a team of bug-eyed skeeks to pull his wagon cart anywhere he wanted to go. The idea made him smile and growl with mirth.

  “Go find that big sneaky bastard Graven and send him here,” Bzorch ordered. “Then see if Vachen can get one of his skeek friends to swim a trolley rope across the river north of Castlemont. After that’s done, kill Vachen and those nasty skeeks he brought back.”

  “What are you going to do?” Cozchin asked, now enamored with the prospect of killing zard-men.

  “I’m going to send Graven over to Wildermont to sniff around. Put the tower men on alert. I want all movement across the river reported. If Ironspike is really over there I will have it."

  ***

  “Wheen the High King heers of thes ye’ll find yee’re in a fix,” Princess Rosa chirped indignantly. “He well come for me, you knew.”

  “My dear Princess, you’ve hit the anvil squarely,” Cole responded with a hint of mockery in his tone. “The High King is exactly who my queen hopes to attract with such lovely bait.”

  “Wheen he comes, yee’ll regret thes affront.”

  Cole laughed, poured a dollop of water haphazardly over her face, and then tied the filthy sack back over her head. He gave a whistle and the covered tinker’s wagon they were riding in lurched forward.

  It’s just a dream, Rosa said to herself as she sat up. Looking around, she realized that it had been just a dream. She wasn’t jostling along in the back of the wagon with a pale-skinned wizard, but neither was she lying in the down four-poster bed in her mother’s Seaward palace. She was in a circular chamber at the top of one of the Dragon Queen’s lofty towers—the same place she had been for days and days on end.

  She had all but given up on High King Mikahl’s rescue. The first few days she half expected him to come swooping in on his magical horse to save her, but night after night she cried herself to sleep, each tear carrying away with it a small amount of hope.

  He was afield in Valleya, she knew, dealing with her uncle, King Broderick. She understood that he might not even know she had been taken yet. If he did, he couldn’t possibly know where she was being held. These realizations became clearer as the days wore on. It occurred to her that, if she really was bait, then Queen Shaella would eventually have to dangle her in front of her prey in order to draw him there. The longer Rosa spent in the tower,
the less she was sure she wanted that to happen. Even without her dragon, Queen Shaella was a powerful force. Rosa didn’t want Mikahl to become a victim too.

  A soft humming sound told Rosa that the strange lift was coming up through the hole in the center of the plank floor. Food and wine would be on it. She would have to get it from the lift quickly or it would go back down, and she would go hungry. Several times she had been tempted to climb onto the platform and ride it down, but fear had kept her from it. Surely the Dragon Queen had her slimy lizards guarding the tower’s exits.

  To her surprise, it was more than just food on the lift this time. The hard but beautiful looking woman who’d tricked a dragon and stolen the greatest kingdom in the realm was standing there looking at Rosa with a curious smile on her scarred face.

  “He’s going to keel yew, jest like he deed Pael,” Rosa snapped, surprising herself with the heat of her voice.

  “I’m sure he will try, love,” Queen Shaella responded. In her hand she held a pair of heavy shears, the kind saddlers use to cut through thick leather strapping. The jab about the demise of Shaella’s father didn’t seem to faze her.

  “He’s close, you know,” Shaella taunted. “Your hero and that kingdom-less fool Jarrek have been harassing King Ra’Gren as of late. Ra’Gren had to kill a hundred of his Wildermont innocents to quell their meddling. He beheaded them himself, right in the market square at O’Dakahn.” She spoke of these things as if she were talking about a poorly chosen gown that a rival lady had worn to the ball. “The question is will this glorified squire come for you at all?” Shaella stepped off the lift and strolled her way around the ill-kept room where her father used to keep his messenger hawks and pigeons. “A king has to think about his people first, you know,” she laughed. “If he has a kingdom left to rule that is. This one might just decide that your life isn’t worth it.”

  “Yeer wrong!” Rosa shouted, with new tears rolling down her cheeks. She hoped Shaella was wrong, but couldn’t find much confidence in the thought.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” Shaella said, taking Rosa’s hand in hers. Before the young Princess could pull away Shaella cut half of the little finger from Rosa’s right hand off with the shears. Rosa squealed in agony and clutched at the missing digit. Blood surged freely out of the wound and down her arm. Shaella laughed and quickly pocketed the finger she had snipped. “With this little bit I’ll make sure he comes and finds you.”

  Rosa retched while trying to wrap part of her dress around the bleeding stump. She’d never felt this helpless in all her life. The room began to spin around her. Pain throbbed through her arm into her shoulder.Then her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she fainted on the floor.

  ***

  In the empty plane of blackness that held Gerard, he savored the taste of the creature known as Kraw.

  Days ago he had approached the great hell-born demon and was mocked when he asked for its help. Gerard’s pent up hate, and his ill-formed dragon-born instincts overwhelmed him then. He attacked Kraw viciously. The devilish thing rained blow after blow down upon Gerard’s plated skin to little or no effect. Kraw’s demonic spells of hellfire and lightning did even less damage. Gerard tore into the demon like a starving dog into a plate of fresh beef. His own magical attacks of blinding white light, and his terribly sharp teeth and claws overcame the devil in a matter of moments. Soon, Gerard was wallowing in a great lake of thick black blood, and relishing the feel of the tingling power his soul was absorbing.

  He was Kraw now. He was Gerard too, but Kraw was a part of him. Each and every bite of the devil’s flesh he swallowed increased his strength. No longer just a disfigured dragon-blooded beast with a demon trapped in his mind, he was now a force to be reckoned with. He was as much demon as he was man, and as much dragon as he was demon. As his power grew, so did his thirst for it. He wanted to be free from this hell. Kraw’s dark knowledge flooded his mind and filled his molten veins with raw power. There were places down here where Gerard could feast, he learned from the hell-born essence. Places where he might gain the power he needed to escape. There were lesser demons he could send to the world above to help Shaella. There were so many possibilities that he found himself tearing savagely into what was left of his meal so that he might move on to another. Already the red-robed priests who worshipped Kraw were on their way to Westland. They would do Gerard’s bidding now. They would do all they could to help him and Shaella be together again. He would expend everything that he was to make sure of it, and he would devour anything that got in his way.

  Chapter Twenty – One

  Mikahl couldn’t believe he was actually back in Westland. It would have been an emotional moment had he not been so wracked with nerves. He couldn’t understand how the people of Southport were going about their business as if nothing were amiss. There were scaly green zard-men working among the humans, and no one seemed to mind. They were doing the harder labor that the men who’d been drafted into King Glendar’s army had once done. The bustling city seemed to be thriving, and everywhere Mikahl looked he saw the yellow and black lightning star banner fluttering in the breeze.

  Mikahl, Maxrell Tyne, and four Highwander soldiers, all dressed in the garb of Dakaneese sell-swords, only garnered the occasional glance from the people. Mikahl was torn between finding Lord Gregory and searching out Princess Rosa. He knew that if he could find Lord Gregory he would gain an adviser who understood both politics and strategy. Lord Gregory could also help him figure out what to do about Rosa, and the Dragon Queen. He had no idea where the Princess had been taken, but he had some information about Lord Gregory’s whereabouts from the mercenary, Tyne, so his course was decided for him. He wasn’t sure Princess Rosa was even in Westland. With Queen Shaella wanting his head so badly, he was keenly aware of his surroundings. He only hoped the Lion Lord hadn’t been caught by the Queen’s soldiers while snooping around looking for Lady Trella.

  According to Tyne, if Lady Trella wasn’t a Dakaneese captive, she was most likely a refugee on the Isle of Salazar. A few dozen nobles and merchants had gotten word before Shaella’s attack and had fled Westland by ship. Salazar had taken them in. The Westland nobles that King Ra’Gren successfully ransomed had been sent to the island as well. Tyne knew this because he had escorted a few of them there himself.

  Tyne spoke to a man who saw Grommen riding around in a fancy carriage with a secretive person of wealth. The two had stayed at an inn that Mikahl remembered as the Golden Lion, but was now called the Dragon’s Doorstep. Tyne said he hoped to find them still there, but if not, he assured Mikahl he would gather as much information as he could. Mikahl saw no sign of a fancy carriage as they approached the upscale place. When they gained the entrance, Tyne suggested that Mikahl and the other men wait outside. Mikahl had been the King of Westland’s personal squire for several years, and Lord Gregory’s before that. He didn’t want to be recognized. Against his better judgment, he agreed, knowing that if Tyne decided to betray him, he would be in a serious bind.

  For a long while they waited near the entryway trying not to look nervous or suspicious. The Highwander soldiers looked as out of place as Mikahl felt. Their fidgeting and pacing seemed to betray them as impostors. The truth was it made them appear angry and impatient. This wasn’t the section of the city where idle sell-swords were welcome, and a nearby candlemaker soon started complaining.

  From down the street a sarzard grumbled something in his tongue to a human underling who translated the question to the candlemaker. “What is the issue? These men are obviously waiting for their employer who is inside the inn.”

  “They’re scaring away my custom is what they’re doing!” the man responded indignantly.

  Mikahl heard the man’s voice over the din and saw the sarzard, and the others gathering around him, staring back at them curiously. Instinctively, his hand reached over his shoulder and fingered Ironspike’s hilt. He didn’t dare pull the sword here. Its powerful magic would draw unwelcome attention to him and h
is men. Casually, he moved his hand to his hip where Lord Gregory’s sword hung in its scabbard. It was all he could do to keep from drawing it to try and fight his way out of this predicament. The Highwander men were alert now too, but none drew steel. Mikahl’s only comfort was that he knew all it would take was a word for these men to follow his lead.

  As the sarzard, and his group, approached, a few possibilities ran through Mikahl’s mind. If they were forced to fight, he thought they could make quick work of the zard-man and his troop. Hopefully they could do it without attracting much attention. They would have to silence the loud merchant who was now pointing and gesturing angrily, pulling passersby into the ordeal. They could make a run for it, but there really was no safe place to run. A human wearing a guard uniform similar to the sarzard listened to the lizard-man hiss and growl something that none of them could understand. He then stepped forward and spoke.

  “Sarzard Askolzz said you have to wait somewhere else,” the man said with more than a little uneasiness in his voice. “You’re scaring away the custom.”

  Mikahl was relieved that none of his men had drawn a weapon. “But our captain is inside,” Mikahl replied, easing his hand away from Lord Gregory’s weapon. “He should be along soon.”

  The man gave him an odd look. Mikahl realized that his accent wasn’t even close to Dakaneese. If anything, it gave him away as a Westlander. The man spoke to the sarzard in a growling series of hisses and spurts. The lizard-man shook his head and replied. The man translated. “He says there are several taverns in the immediate area. One of you can stay and wait for your captain. The others must get out of the street.” The man looked to the sarzard as he clicked and hissed some more. “He says that if you were not here on business he would take your weapons.” The translator swallowed hard then looked Mikahl directly in the eyes. “I would go to the Otter’s Den if I were you. It’s just around the corner there.” The man pointed up the street away from the candle maker’s shop.