Kings, Queens, Heroes, & Fools

by M. R. Mathias

  The web went up in a great whoosh of flame. The spider wiggled and rolled crazily, but finally curled up into a charred ball. As soon as the smoke cleared, Oarly ran in and began dousing the second web. There were two spiders there, and one of them came after Oarly with surprising quickness.

  “Light it,” Hyden said and Phen reached out touching the wrapped arrow tip with the torch. The arrow arced out over the cavern floor and came down just over Oarly’s shoulder. It missed the spider, but the sudden appearance of the flame startled the creature. No sooner had it returned to its web than Hyden’s second arrow ignited the lantern oil. Oarly darted away from the blaze with a wild grin on his face and started dancing a jig and howling. At least that’s what it looked like he was doing. In truth the dwarf’s arm had caught fire and he was wheeling around trying to put it out. Master Biggs started after the dwarf with one of his buckets and ordered his man to follow.

  “But the other spider’s not dead,” the seaman said fearfully.

  A glare from the Deck Master replenished the man’s courage, and a few moments later they were heaving their buckets at Oarly. Master Biggs finished the task by dousing the last spider with oil and tossing the dwarf’s torch at it.

  After Oarly calmed down, they wandered cautiously into the cavern shaft. It narrowed considerably and seemed to end, but the light of Phen’s magical orb revealed another opening higher up in the rock.

  It took all of a moment for Hyden to climb up and look. He stood there in awe for a long time. Golden statues from ages past grew like mushrooms out of piles of coins. A gleaming sword, and a half dozen chests bursting with gold and jewels littered the cave. A giant jeweled collar with a smaller collar dangling from its clasp leaned against a broken piece of ship’s mast that was laying under a half-eaten fish the size of a man.

  A chill froze away Hyden’s amazement. He could see a pair of jade eyes peeking out of a busted chest. They were staring directly at him, and he knew he had found what he was after.

  “Oarly,” Hyden called out. The dwarf had crawled up and was peeking over the edge of the rock, but was too stunned to respond.

  “Oarly,” Hyden yelled again, thinking that the dwarf was still down with the others. Hyden suddenly remembered the words of the White Goddess from his dream. When you recover the Skull of Zorellin, you’ll find great danger with it.

  “What is it?” Oarly responded as he pulled himself over the edge.

  “How long does it take one of those spiders to spin its web?” asked Hyden as another thought occurred to him.

  “The turn of a glass, or two,” Oarly answered absently. “There’s no need to worry about them webbing us in, lad. I can tell ye firsthand that our fire was plenty hot.” He held up his charred sleeve as proof.

  “I’m not worried about the spiders,” Hyden said in a voice that carried his fear with it. “I’m worried about how soon it’s coming back.”

  “How soon what’s coming back?” Brady asked as he joined them.

  Phen crawled up, followed by Master Biggs who answered for Brady. “Whatever was eating that godsmackerel?”

  “It’s, it’s... It’s still fresh,” the seaman stated the obvious with a whimper.

  Phen was too excited to be afraid, and as soon as he’d finished speaking, he realized he should have kept his mouth shut, but it was too late.

  “Hyden look,” he pointed at the huge half-eaten fish. “Look at the size of the bites that’ve been taken out of it!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hyden investigated the teeth marks in the dead fish and decided they were left by a dragon. Luckily it wasn’t an older one. He judged by the size and spacing of the marks that this wyrm would be around sixty feet from tip to tail, with a head the size of a mule cart. Claret’s hissed warning from his dream the night before echoed through his head. Not all dragonss are scapable of understandingss. Do what you mussst.

  She was telling him that their friendship was between the two of them, he decided. He thought he understood. Just like she might destroy a village and its inhabitants, he might have the need to kill this young dragon. She wouldn’t hold it against him if he did. He was glad for this insight, for without it he might try to find a way to spare such a beast, if it could be done. He was glad that it wouldn’t matter in this case, not if they got what they were after and hurried out of there.

  “Grab the Silver Skull, Brady,” he ordered. “It’s there in that chest.” He pointed at it. “Get it, and let’s be gone before our host returns.”

  “Are ye daft, lad?” asked Oarly. “Here is freedom for all of King Jarrek’s folk.” He indicated the treasure. “There’s enough to buy all of the slaves back, and then some.”

  “Aye,” Hyden agreed. “And what are you gonna do with it? Are you going to swim it off of this island? Grab a handful each of you, then come on.”

  “He’s right,” Master Biggs agreed, as he shoved jewels and coins into the water bucket he was still carrying. “The Seawander’s not the ship to haul this load. We’ll have to come back for it.”

  Since Phen made no move to pick anything up, Brady handed him the Silver Skull. The boy didn’t seem to care about the value of the treasure around them at all.

  Brady waded through a pile of gold and silver coins over to the gleaming sword that was jutting majestically out of the pile. Grinning ear to ear he pulled his old blade out of its sheath and slid the pristine piece of well-forged steel into its place. It fit well enough, he decided, and he tossed the old weapon away. Then he went for a decanter full of diamonds. These he gathered not for himself, but for the people of Wildermont. Each one he shoved into his pouch was freedom for two or three of his countrymen, and it appeared that he was trying to get them all.

  “Enough!” Hyden finally yelled. He was getting an uneasy feeling. “Let’s be gone before it returns.”

  Reluctantly they agreed. Oarly let Hyden lead the way to the lip they’d climbed. The dwarf was burdened with the jewel encrusted statue of some strange looking animal that he had heaved onto his shoulder. It looked as if it weighed as much as Phen.

  The seamen were no better off. The water buckets they carried were overflowing with sparkling gems and heavy gold coins, and Phen was struggling with the weight of the wicked looking jade-eyed skull he held cradled in his arms.

  Hyden and Brady had their weapons out, but Brady’s sword wasn’t being held at the ready. He was just using the light from Hyden’s magical orb to study its jeweled hilt. Had he been ready to defend himself with the priceless blade, he might have been alert enough to avoid the young black dragon’s streaking blast of sizzling breath. As it was, the Wildermont fighter was caught off guard and lashed out awkwardly in terror and pain. The clothes and skin of his left arm quickly foamed into a soupy pink froth, exposing meat and gore. Only the quick instinctual swipe of his sword, that barely nicked the creature’s nostril, saved the others from a similar fate.

  The dragon withdrew its head back into the darkness, but it hadn’t fled. Its angry growl filled the tunnel like a rumbling quake.

  “Back!” Hyden screamed, as he loosed arrow after arrow at the shape looming in the darkness. “Go back. Run!”

  He kept loosing arrows until the sound of feet behind him had retreated. Then he turned toward Brady and winced at what he saw.

  “Go,” the Wildermont King’s Guard managed to say through gritted teeth. His left arm and shoulder were nothing more than dangling sloughs of sinew and bone now, but he still stood with the fancy sword held out before him. “Help my king, Hyden Hawk,” he said as he stumbled off toward the beast.

  Hyden felt a deep pang of sympathy and respect as he charged back toward the others. Brady was a good man. He couldn’t let the loss overwhelm him, though. He had to think.

  An idea began forming itself even as he ran, and when he burst into the treasure cavern, a glance at Phen’s tear-streaked face strengthened his resolve. He snatched something from the nearest pile of loot and began calling out orders
like a battlefield general. Out in the tunnel, a primal battle cry arose from Brady, but it was cut short with a sickening crunch and a growl that shook the rock around them.

  It was all the others could do to keep up with Hyden’s sharp commands, but they somehow managed it. Hyden only hoped that everything Claret said was true. If the magic of her teardrop dangling from his neck didn’t protect him, then his plan was a waste, and his life would be over.

  As the growling hiss of the angry dragon came near to the entrance of the treasure cave, Hyden realized that it was far too late to wonder about it now. Already, the dragon was peeking in to get a good look at its next victim.

  Off to Hyden’s right, the terrified deckhand shifted, causing a golden goblet to tumble down a pile of coins and clank into an ornate candelabra. Hyden’s anger flared at the fool as the dragon lunged its head into the room and blasted the area with its corrosive breath. As if the man had been made of sand, and the dragon’s spew merely jet of water, the gurgling seaman melted away into a grisly pool of gore.

  Hyden’s eyes darted around the mess. He was terrified for his young friend. Phen had just been over there. Hyden couldn’t see him, or anything that might have been him, but it was no relief. He knew that if the boy had been near that blast he would have at least been spattered. Even the jewels and precious metals that had been doused by the black dragon’s breath were now hissing and bubbling away. Tears welled up in Hyden’s eyes at the thought of losing the boy.

  “Over here you little black wyrm!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  Oarly and Master Biggs were in position by the door, but the dragon’s head was still too far into the chamber for the plan to work. Seeing this, Hyden threw his arms up as if to cast some powerful spell and started striding at the dragon fearlessly. As he had hoped, the beast pulled back and started sucking in the breath that it would use to melt him into the floor.

  Before the dragon finished inhaling, Hyden yelled, “Now!”

  Oarly was standing against the wall beside the entryway. The dwarf threw a rope over the top of the dragon’s neck to Master Biggs, who was waiting on the other side. With the precision of a veteran seaman, the Deck Master pulled the end of the rope through the buckle of the great collar that was laid out across the floor and took off running with the rope in tow. Hyden saw the collar leap from the floor as the rope pulled it up. It looked like the noose was going to close, but he never had a chance to see the rest of what happened.

  A huge spray of hot liquid washed over Hyden as the dragon unleashed its acidy spew. His vision was wiped away and the breath pulled from his lungs, but, to his surprise, a pulse of radiant energy erupted from the medallion at his chest and engulfed him. He heard Phen scream out in anguish and was thankful to know that the boy had survived.

  “For Doon and Brady!” he heard Oarly yell.

  Then the dragon’s gigantic roar filled the chamber. A moment later Hyden’s head slammed full of chaotic thoughts of hate and destruction. The dragon was more than a little angry. Hyden commanded the thoughts to cease and sent out a shocking reprimand to their source to establish control.

  A muffled roar erupted then, a long howl from Oarly that seemed to pass over Hyden’s head. The dwarf’s yell ended in a tinkling crash of coins and a sharp, “Ooof!”

  As the bright dancing sparkles of energy that had engulfed Hyden twinkled out of existence, he found himself on his knees before the seething maw of the young black dragon. All around him metal and rock hissed and smoldered.

  He looked around the room and saw Phen huddled in a sobbing crouch over Oarly’s splayed body. The Deck Master was standing as still as a statue, as if he were frozen in place. His mouth was a perfect ’O.’ The rope he had pulled the dragon collar closed with dangled limply from his hand.

  “You didn’t have to kill my friends,” Hyden said to the dragon harshly.

  The sound of his voice caused Phen and the Deck Master to gasp in surprise. They thought Hyden had been melted by the dragon.

  “You tricked me,” the dragon growled more into Hyden’s mind than aloud.

  “You tricked yourself with your eagerness to destroy us,” Hyden spat. “Now go skulk around in the bigger cavern and think about your new situation.”

  The dragon hissed and hesitated. Through the smaller collar on Hyden’s neck he sent a sharp shock of persuasive punishment through to the beast. The dragon trembled visibly with the sensation, but resisted the urge to roar out. The idea of the dragon’s collar sickened Hyden, but after what this dragon had done to Brady and the deckhand, he found he could stomach using it. Reluctantly, the wyrm withdrew its big head from the chamber and eased back out of the tunnel.

  “How did you survive that?” asked Phen. He started to say more, but the memory of Brady’s fate, and the sight of the puddle of remains of the deckhand overwhelmed him. “Get up, Oarly,” he sobbed and shook at the dwarf’s shoulders.

  Oarly groaned, and Phen hugged him fiercely. A pudgy fingered hand came up and patted Phen’s head reassuringly. “I’m all right, lad,” he said. “Was that Sir Hyden Hawk I heard ordering the dragon about?”

  “Yeah,” Phen said. “But Brady didn’t make it.”

  “Aye,” Oarly sighed. “Sometimes this be the way of things, lad.”

  “Aye,” Phen sniffled and helped Oarly to his feet. Tears flowed freely down his face.

  Hyden learned from Phen that Oarly had leapt onto the dragon’s back to fasten the collar and had been slung across the chamber during the skirmish. Battered and bruised, the dwarf was content to haul out the dead seaman’s bucket of jewels instead of the encumbering statue.

  Master Biggs hadn’t spoken since the dragon blasted his man away. He was alert, though, and answered the enquiries about his condition with grunts and nods. He started to leave his bucket of wealth behind, but thought better of it. Too many slaves could be freed for him to just abandon it.

  The three men and the dwarf made their way out of the lower tunnel warily. As they emerged into the great cavern, the dragon was lying up on the scalloped shelf with its head hanging down glaring at them. Hyden shifted the weight of the Silver Skull to one arm and put the other around Phen protectively. Through the collar he told the dragon to lie still until they passed. He kept a mental thumb on the beast’s neck until they were well on their way into the long passage that led toward the camp.

  When the light of day could clearly be seen ahead of them, Phen hurried toward it. Hyden didn’t stop him. He couldn’t blame the boy for wanting to be out in the open again. He was glad the ordeal was over, and for the first time since the dragon attacked, thoughts of Brady filled his head.

  All of Hyden’s life, death had been near him. Hardly a year passed that one of his cousins or uncles hadn’t fallen to their deaths from the hawkling nesting cliffs where his brother had found Talon. Then Mikahl’s friends, Lord Gregory, and Loudin the hunter had been mauled by the hellcat up in the Giant Mountains. His friend Vaegon had been killed by the Choska in the battle of Xwarda. He found that he couldn’t shed a tear for the Wildermont King’s Guard, but he held a place of respect for the man in his heart. Brady had traveled across the continent warning people of the demon-wizard’s army of undead, and the final stand he made had gained them the time they needed to set their trap. Hyden knew that King Jarrek loved Brady like a son. He didn’t relish the idea of telling the Red Wolf of Wildermont of his man’s death.

  Talon’s fierce shriek broke Hyden’s reverie and the alarm his hawkling familiar sent through him grabbed his full attention. Intruders in the camp, he gathered from the sound. “Come on, Phen’s in trouble,” he said as he took off at a sprint toward the cave mouth ahead of them.

  ***

  Master Biggs followed, but Oarly couldn’t find the strength to run. His body had been bruised to the point of breaking when the dragon slung him into the wall. The dwarf set his bucket to the side and took off in a hop-step after the other two. Oarly decided that, if young Phen was in trou
ble, he could suffer the pain of a short jog. The scene he found when he emerged out of the tunnel was startling, and a little confusing.

  Oarly had never seen a breed giant before, and the pale bald man wearing wizard’s robes looked eerily like the demon-wizard Pael. Oarly soon saw why Hyden Hawk and Master Biggs weren’t trying to fight the new arrivals. Another giant had Phen by the collar and held a wicked looking blade to the boy’s throat. Not too far away lay the bodies of the two seamen who had been posted to watch out for them. Oarly could see, by the way the blood still oozed from the stumps where their heads had once been, that they had only just been killed.

  “I’ll take the skull,” the bald wizard said in a menacing voice. “And the controlling collar,” he added before Hyden could command the dragon to come to their aid.

  Hyden sat the skull down in the thick grass before him and started to take the collar off.

  “Let him go,” Hyden indicated Phen, before he loosened the collar. “Or there is no bargain.”

  Flick made a miniscule gesture with his hand and half a dozen crossbow bolts came whizzing down among them. One of them hit Master Biggs in the back and sent him sprawling to the ground. Oarly looked back and saw a scattering of lizard-men high up on the hill. Some were reloading; some had their weapons still trained on the group.

  “You’re in no position to bargain, Hyden Skyler,” Flick said. “My queen ordered me to kill you, but I grew to respect your brother before his demise. For that reason alone I’ll spare you.”

  “Take the skull and the collar,” Hyden pleaded. “But leave him. He’s just a boy.”

  “He is our guarantee that you’ll not pursue,” Flick said. “But as Gerard’s friend, I give you my word that once we are on our ship I will let him go. Once I put on the collar, the dragon will keep you from following us.”

  “And if I refuse to give you the collar?” Hyden asked. The last thing he wanted was for that bitch Shaella to get control of another dragon. It was bad enough that she was going to get the Silver Skull. Hyden could only imagine what sort of trouble she would cause with it.