Dragons, Power, Courts, And War (Book 2)

by Vic Broquard

  Their breakthrough with the Morph spell also worked wonders on the morale of all of the other women as well. Hope surged through out Zdenka’s tower like never before. The seventeen women were now able to operate fully independently and assist the others taking a huge burden off of the normal students and the adepts who had stuck around after graduating to help care for the armless students.

  Further, at the Midsummer’s Ball, more of the seventeen met eligible bachelors and more friendships blossomed, though none were as strong as the Gang of Six, who planned fall weddings. True, while the brides would still remain in the tower, they would have Sundays to spend with their new husbands.

  As August drew to a close, the seventeen achieved yet another milestone. Eliska was the first to successfully cast the new spell, but Danika was only minutes behind her. The group was outside Brn standing in a small open meadow. Zdenka had set up red cloth X’s a hundred feet away from the group of seventeen students. Eliska suddenly vanished from where she stood beside Danika and appeared just above a red X. Her first Teleport spell had activated and everyone cheered her. Soon Danika appeared there as well. By the end of the afternoon, all seventeen were Teleporting all around the meadow, thoroughly elated with their success. All knew the implications: they were officially mages! They were among the elite of Adapazan and the other worlds as well. They were mages!

  “Now then, it’s back to the tower, ladies. Again, I caution you. Teleporting into and out of my tower is tightly controlled. Unless you contact the Door Warden Blanka first and have her lower the protection spells, your Teleport spell will fail to activate. This is done for all our security, we cannot have assassins teleporting into the tower while we are sleeping or studying. Further, there are similar protections on the Fortress and grounds. Brn proper is unprotected, so you could teleport from here to our front doors. Message Blanka if you need to teleport in or out and you must abide by her decisions. Sometimes emergencies arise and we don’t have time to notify you students. The Door Warden is always kept informed first, so trust her judgment in these matters, my new mages.”

  That evening as usual, all of her students joined Zoran’s whole group for supper in his Great Hall. This evening, the six proud husbands joined them and helped to celebrate the women’s incredible achievement. Within days, all of Brn was talking about the seventeen. Having so many new mages here in Brn was looked upon as fantastic new security by the local townsfolk. Such a quantity was unheard of before in any town or city on Adapazan. The local would-be soothsayers, who had complained all along that their Archmage was being foolish in attempting to train armless women in the ways of magic, all had to eat crow that week.

  Politically, Baron Zoran, Baron John, and Baron Arcangelo now saw things in a whole different light. Zoran now had seventeen more mages to help defend Adapazan with perhaps another six on the way before too long. Baron John hoped to eventually add thirty-three mages to his employ, while Baron Arcangelo hoped for another twenty-two. Baronesses Chan and Wen now anticipated that their eight armless women would also become mages for Jing and within a few years, maybe thirty more would become mages as well. The two baronesses were in desperate need for mages at the moment. After the celebration was over and Zoran was alone once more, he pondered the significance of this. He explained to his walls, “The dragons have just given me an enormous gift of mages. Perhaps they have planted the seeds of their own destruction.” Then he began to wonder if these women would progress even further in their training. When Zdenka finally crawled into their bed beside him, he asked her, “Are they nearing their maximum? The seventeen?”

  She knew that sooner or later he would be asking this question. “To be honest, dear, nothing about these women surprises me any longer. No, I have seen no signs that they are nearing their maximum. However, we should soon begin seeing missed spells cropping up here and there between them, just like it did with our group when we were all learning magic under Archmage Oldrich.”

  “Keep me posted, please. Security and all that.”

  “Ha, you just want a whole bunch more Archmages, I know politics, baron,” she teased him.

  “Well?” he teased her back.

  “We will just have to see,” she returned her conservative tease.

  Chapter 21 Countermoves

  Werner, the black, and Dario, the red, wasted no time in getting together to work out new plans. “We must take advantage of the supposed lull in our relations with the humans,” Werner suggested.

  “Indeed. This Baron Zoran always seems to be at the crux of attacks against us. We need spies in his court,” Dario pointed out.

  “Failing that, we need someone in Brn gathering information. After all, what happened to all of our babies that they stole when they took away our women?” Werner questioned rhetorically. Both knew the answer: they murdered the babies. Early May, Schultz, the black, and Elmo, the red, were chosen to infiltrate Brn and set themselves up in positions to gather information on Zoran and the Archmages.

  That settled, the two began discussing just how Zoran always seemed to be able to find their secret caverns. “Look, until we figure this out, what’s the point in abducting and breeding? We’ll just lose them again as before,” Dario, the red, pointed out the obvious.

  “Let’s approach this logically,” Werner, the black, sighed. There just had to be logic behind it. “What about See Through Another’s Eyes or Hear?”

  “Don’t be silly. Those spells have a very limited range,” Dario pointed out the fallacy in those spells. “He is an Archmage. I’ve heard of a powerful Vision spell, but I only have rumors of what it can do. That is a possibility, a long shot, but it probably doesn’t go off-world.”

  “Maybe we are going about this backwards. Maybe Zoran is using one of his Duska skills,” Werner suggested. “We know next to nothing about them.”

  Dario scratched his head and replied, “Hum, good point, but why haven’t the other barons used it as well? Baron John and Arcangelo ought to have been able to locate the caverns where we were holding women taken from their worlds. No, it is only Zoran who is doing this. What’s so unusual about him?”

  “Well, he is an Archmage and a Duska baron,” Werner pointed out.

  “Hum, well so is Verushka and Nadia but they are not doing this, only him. Do you suppose that it is someone else entirely who is discovering the locations of our secret caverns?” Dario suggested.

  “Perhaps you are on to something, Dario. We should exercise far more care in the choosing and security of our new bases. And I know just the perfect thing to do! I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before! It’s brilliant, Dario, brilliant! I know where we can be totally immune to the Duska and their Shadow Walking,” Werner exclaimed in a bout of brilliant thinking. “Voss! We take our captured females to Voss. They can never find them there. They don’t know where Voss is located. Only we dragons know that!”

  “Brilliant, Werner, positively brilliant!” Dario exclaimed grasping instantly the totality of the suggestion and all that it implied. Total security for their breeding program. No more interference whatsoever.

  “We must be careful to keep Aldrick off our backs. We take only one woman from a given village and spread them out among the various planets,” Werner continued. “We should abduct say a dozen at most each week. We were too greedy before, acting too hastily. Let’s be more deliberate this time. Make sure that pretty women are picked; we want handsome young dragons from them,” Werner continued. Dario agreed wholly, but wondered if having a pretty human mother yielded handsome baby dragons.

  Dario then added, “Perhaps we ought to insert a spy in many of the other baron’s cities. Sooner or later, someone will learn key information about their plans.”

  “Yes we should. However, we ought to work out new defense plans. This Zoran keeps thwarting every move that we make. I thought that we had a sure kill defense at our Maeve cavern complex. Yet they survived nicely while we lost many,” Werner complained.

  “Wel
l based on what your spy at the High Council reported, those wicked rods are only good for at most stopping ten breath attacks. After that, they are totally vulnerable. With so many Archmages, you can bet our spells will be countered,” Dario pointed out the obvious.

  “Yes and that also means they can have some immunity to attacks. There is such a spell that does that I’m told. This just means that when we next get attacked, we are going to have to really let them have it so as to use up their rod’s capacities and their spell’s capacities to protect them. Once that is done, we kill them,” Werner growled and banged his huge tail on the stone cavern floor.

  After a long pause, Werner began again, “You know, perhaps we could lay a trap, one that might help us figure out how they are finding our secret hideouts so easily.”

  “Ah, I like that idea, but come to think of it, they have not found a single one of our habitation caves and caverns, only those where we were holding our new breeding stock,” Dario pointed out.

  “You have a point, Dario. “Had they gotten to our habitation sites, think of all the gold and gems that we would have lost! Hum, I still want to lay a trap though. I just have to know how they always seem to know what we don’t want them to know. Let’s think on that one, shall we?” Werner asked and the red agreed.

  “Well, I can always bring in Old Sniffer, Gustavo. I know that he is five hundred sixty years old, but his nose in unequaled,” Dario suggested. All this talk of trying to find out how Zoran knew of their hideouts had set him thinking.

  “Who is Old Sniffer?” Werner asked rather annoyed at having his train of thought interrupted.

  “Tracker. He can pick up scents and follow them anywhere. Keen nose, best one of our kind. I’m going to have him nose around the sites where we lost to Zoran’s group. Can I bring him to those of yours as well? He might just pick up some clues.”

  “I don’t see how, but give it a try.” After they broke up, Dario did just that.

  Old Sniffer was a huge, ancient red, who spent a lot of his time sleeping these days. “Hey wake up, Sniffer. Got a job for you. We need your sniffer.”

  “Huh? Really. Oh I suppose so. I was having such pleasant dreams you know. All you young folk are in such a hurry these days. All right, all right, don’t get your tail in a tussle. I’m coming. What’s the job?” the red asked finally, drawing up to his full height. Dario felt dwarfed by him, but quickly outlined what he wanted done.

  Although days had passed, Dario took the old red from raided cavern to raided cavern. “This one belongs to the blacks. You sure they won’t mind me sniffing around here?” he asked.

  “No, cleared it with Werner. Sniff away.” He did. He sniffed around the outsides, the entrances, and the insides. After finishing up with the last one raided by Zoran’s party, he asked, “Okay so what can you tell us? What’s the old nose saying?”

  “Complicated. That’s what it’s saying.”

  “Of course it’s complicated. If it wasn’t, why would I bother you?” Dario replied a bit testily.

  “Mostly the same humans at each site, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Of course, it’s that nasty Baron Zoran and his crew. We need to know how they located these places. Ideas?”

  “These things cannot be rushed. Nose picked up all sorts of things.” He snorted and blew out a rain of dust particles, many of which landed on Dario who then sneezed too. Gustavo ignored Dario’s nasty look and closed his eyes. They were sitting on the peak above the black’s cavern most recently raided by Zoran. He closed his eyes and began moving his mind over the accumulated odor memories, correlating them, identifying which ones were at which locations. He discarded those scents which did not appear at all of the sites or at least a majority, unless they were faint. The heavy scents he also passed over, those had obviously been the ones present attacking and killing the dragons. Someone had obviously been scouting out these locations and the scent he wanted was a faint one. If humans behaved as he expected, they would not risk valuable scouts, who could somehow find these locations, on a deadly battle to capture them — far too risky of such valuable resources. Hence, he focused on the faint traces.

  After an hour, during which Dario also fell asleep, he stirred. “Hum. I think that you are looking for five humans, they smell strange. I’ve not smelled their smells before or have I? Wait, yes, yes, I have smelled that before. It was when I was surveying all these new worlds looking for a fine place to settle down. Yes, where was it? Oh I know, the one you call Isi. I didn’t like it there — too much open land for me. Yes, your spies come from Isi.”

  An hour later, Dario revisited Werner with his news. “Ah, so we are looking for spies on Isi. Interesting. Strange humans live there. Nomads for the most part, living in crude hide huts. Ah, makes sense now. Those humans are hunters! Yes, Zoran has sicced a bunch of hunters to sniff out our secret hideouts! Well done, Dario. Yes indeed. Now we are getting somewhere.”

  “How is this going to help us?”

  “Well, we’ve narrowed it down to one planet out of sixteen. I’ll let those who live there spy around some and scout around. Don’t suppose your Old Sniffer could track them on Isi and find where they are located, could he?” Werner asked.

  “Probably, I’ll check and see.” He left once more. Unfortunately, it took him two days to rouse Old Sniffer from his deep slumber. The ancient dragon had overdone it physically and was quite tired.

  “Well, I suppose that I can sniff them out, but Dario that is a whole planet to search! After all that exercise a couple days ago, I need my sleep.”

  Dario got Old Sniffer to agree to spend a day sniffing and then sleep as much as he needed before starting out again. He ignored the fact that it might take the old one many weeks to sniff the planet and there was no guarantee that his nose would find the scent that he was looking for anyway. Still, it was all they had at the moment.

  Mid-May, Werner and Dario met up again. “Okay we are all set on Voss. We’ve a perfect location established there for our breeding human women. While it is highly unlikely that Zoran and his group will be able to find us there, we are not going to take any chances. Have you got your list of volunteers ready? We will have twenty dragons on duty at all times. We’ve tripled the number of traps and alert spells. I’ve written out specific order of battles to be followed. See here,” he pointed out his copy of the orders he’d plastered all over the walls in the new hideout on Voss. “No one does anything until they reach Point A. Then, twenty fire at the same time. Acid comes at them from their left and right, while your flames come at them from the top and front sides. That ought to reduce their rods to useless. Next, they are all to cast their attack spells, designed to reduce or eliminate their defensive spells. Then, they fire a second volley of acid and flames. Finally, they charge and go head to head with the few that will be left alive.”

  “Of course, that is not all I have planned. I’ve set my best trap designers to work. If by some strange quirk of fate they get by all twenty guards, the traps lie between them and our female hosts, who will be behind Force Walls once they activate the first trap. Further, if they activate the last trap between them and our host females, my final contingency spells will activate, teleporting our breeding stock to a second location. Zoran will have undergone all that for nothing!” Both dragons laughed heartily. No one could withstand this trap!

  “Now it is time to acquire new breeding stock,” Werner went on.

  “What about all that human food they will need?” asked Dario. It had been such a pain gathering up all that human food.

  “Taken care of — plenty is growing on Voss. I’ve sent out a few to forage and fill up the pantry. Even got one who has some experience cooking for humans. She’s going to deal with all their needed cooking. Now one other thing, Dario, we all agree that the breeding stock must not be allowed to retain the use of their arms. With them, despite our spells, they can do many wicked things, killing each other and such. Last time, we used our acid to b
urn them off, but that then forced us to have to dole out some of our own precious healing droughts. All suffered physical trauma which might have bothered the fetuses. We’ve seen your breeding stock. Would you care to share just how you can immobilize their arms like that without giving the breeding stock such trauma?”

  Dario grinned. “Well, I believe that can be arranged. I will instruct him to show your representatives at the cavern how it is done. Yes, it is clean and effective and the humans cannot undo it, not even the almighty Zoran can.” Dario chuckled. At least this action worked well and could not be undone.

  “So the plan is starting tomorrow night, we find sixteen pretty and prime human females, one on each of the planets, and take them to Voss. Then, we wait a week and do it again. We follow that pattern, never striking the same section of the planet a second time. Spread the abductions out far and wide. Make it seem random, which it should be. Each month from now on, we will begat another thirty-two of our kind. Think of it, Dario, a year from now, you will have a hundred ninety-two new reds!”

  Dario chuckled, he liked the numbers. “But what about the greens? They’ve lost far too many already. The whites have backed down, so they don’t get to participate, right?”

  “Right. The greens totally botched it. They had Jing in their hands and lost the whole planet. Idiots. Well, greens are morons anyway. No, we leave those imbeciles out for now. Later on, when we blacks and reds totally dominate these worlds, we can allow the greens to breed a few more of their kind, and the whites will one day come begging to us.” The two chuckled and left to issue the orders. It was the 20th of May.