Prince Richard’s initial instinct was to draw his long sword, but it was no longer at his hip. Instead, he hurried away from the hulking beast, and he squeezed through the bone bars as quickly as he could manage. It was from the outside of the dragon-bone cage that he looked back at the ogre. It was still sitting with its legs extended, but it was holding its arms out toward the prince, a pleading look on its bruised and swollen face. Its eyes were the size of cantaloupes and such a deep shade of blue that they appeared black. It was looking at him in a way that reminded him of the look the hunt master’s pups used to give him when they wanted his attention.
Why he squeezed himself back into the cage, he didn’t know. He removed his left gauntlet and used the edge of the protective steel plate as a blade. It wasn’t as sharp as the plate that covered his thigh, but he wasn’t about to get out of his leg armor to help free the ogre. The first bits of the heavy rope were starting to come apart when the thumping of heavy wings and a long, slow hiss came echoing down the tunnel at them. Prince Richard quickly lay back where he had been earlier and fumbled his gauntlet back into place. The ogre slumped back against the wall as well, and Richard sensed that the huge beast had suddenly grown afraid.
The blue-green flames flared brightly as the wind from the nightshade's wings blasted through the tunnel. Gravelbone was laughing deeply as he slid down from his hellwyrm's back, at least until he saw a bit of rope that Prince Richard had dropped outside the bounds of the ogre cage.
“Whaas diss?” Gravelbone’s voice was a deep curious growl. “You gon run da blackness?”
Richard wasn’t sure what the trollish looking demon was saying, but he was certain that it was talking to him. The tall, lanky, ivory-horned thing was stalking purposefully his way, seemingly amused that he had slipped his ropes. The rattling bones that made up his crude armor looked to be made of human thigh bones with a big orange-black tortoise shell for the breast plate. His shoulder plates were formed of smaller, similarly-colored shells. Hanging from his hip was a wicked-looking blade that was as black as soot and so complexly saw-toothed that no sheath could hold it.
Gravelbone tweaked a latch and squeezed his way through an opening that the ogre could never have fit through, and he showed no fear of the huge, green creature, now cowering from his intrusion.
“Farga Crixn Cruxn yaa?” Gravelbone laughed spitefully at the Crown Prince’s fear. “Lok tav tham,” he held up a clawed hand and inspected it as he spoke another unintelligible series of phrases. Then his wild eyes went wide and flared the same orange-red shade of the tortoise shell armor that he wore. With an extending arm and an open mouth full of razor sharp teeth, he stalked the rest of the way over to Prince Richard and bent toward him. He reached out and palmed Prince Richard’s forehead, his thumb pressing into one temple, the tip of his little finger into the other. His grip was mighty when he squeezed. It didn’t surprise the Goblin King when the Crown Prince’s hands came round and grabbed at his wrist, but it surprised Prince Richard when a sickening glacial chill clenched his bones, and a terrifying vision flashed into his brain. What he saw shocked him to stillness, and the feel of Gravelbone’s tainted High Magic, as it boiled the marrow inside his bones, nearly destroyed him.
“Thas Wha de cawl me Gravelbone,” the Goblin King chuckled under his breath sinisterly.
In the eye of Prince Richard’s mind he saw his dragon, Royal, being savaged by a gigantic, red-scaled mudge. The huge, crimson wyrm had the sparkling blue’s neck in its jaws and was jerking its head back and forth. Worse, Royal’s tail had fallen completely still.
A roar resounded from far too close to him, then, and the vision in Richard’s head abruptly ceased. The ogre had worried his ropes free and had rolled up onto its knees. It swung a huge meaty fist and struck Gravelbone squarely in the temple, knocking him away from the prince. Gravelbone let out a shriek that ran up through the prince’s ear canals and scalded the inside of his skull.
The nightshade's head darted in between the bone cage’s bars, and then, with a snap of its slavering jaws, it chomped down on the ogre’s arm with a sickening, wet crunch. The ogre slumped over and shuddered, while its bright scarlet lifeblood pumped out from exposed arteries. The blood looked black under the light of the strange green flames, as it flowed in a slick, glossy puddle across the cavern floor.
Luckily for Prince Richard, his presence was seemingly forgotten, at least for the moment.
Chapter Twenty-One
“It’s a relief to feel your presence, Jenka,” Zahrellion said into his dreaming brain. She had been on the ship for two full days now, trying to reach out to him and Crystal with her mind. She had little success until Frunien started aiding her. The skittish druid had pledged his undying loyalty to her in exchange for removing the frightening dampening hood from his head. Together they pooled their magic, reached out farther and were able to search longer. They managed to communicate with Crystal yesterday, and now Zahrellion was intruding into one of Jenka’s dreams.
“Why are you in my forest?” he asked her curiously. He wasn’t thinking with his wakeful mind. He was in a dream state, and Zahrellion could only hope that he would retain, and later recall, the instructions she was about to give him. She was impressed with the depth of detail his mind projected into the lush greenery surrounding them. And when he eased up beside her ghostly form and slipped his arm around her, she warmed inside, though she couldn’t actually feel his touch.
“It’s not just your forest, Jenka,” she smirked, but in a sweet, soothing voice.
Her stark white hair made her lavender eyes seem all the more alien, but the tattoos on her face and forehead weren’t nearly as pronounced in this place that Jenka’s mind had created. She was wearing rough spun, tied at the waist with cord, just like Daliah used to wear around Crag. “Is Daliah still alive?” He wondered aloud.
“I don’t know. You have to listen to me,” she told him. She forced away her curiosity at who Daliah might be. “Crystal is coming for you. She never found Jade. You have to find a way out of your cell before Solstice Day, or she will harass Kingston’s harbor until they set you free.”
“The Hazeltine already helped me out,” he mumbled absently. In his dream, he had been halfheartedly tracking an elk that looked more like an oversized version of one of the many table dogs the Rangers used to keep up at Kingsmen’s Keep.
“What Hazeltine? Where are you now?” she asked with a touch of concern.
“I’m here with you. How could I be anywhere else?” He responded.
“It doesn’t matter, love,” she conceded. Even in the misty dream world they were in, the light press of his body against hers was distracting. “Either you will remember this conversation when you wake up or you won’t,” she finally said.
“That’s true,” Jenka commented. “Tell me what you must. I need to start what I have to finish, so that I can get done what I’ve promised to do.”
“Who have you promised what?” she was suddenly worried. The Witches of Hazeltine were notoriously tricky and not so honorable in most cases. “Jenka, what have you done?”
“Nothing, yet,” he grinned like a schoolboy, his dirty-blond bangs hanging in his eyes.
“What happened? No … never mind.” If she had been formed of actual substance, she might have pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Never mind, just listen to me.” Her voice grew stern and serious. If she could, she would have put her hands on his shoulders, so that she could hold him still and look into his eyes to make sure that the information was registering. “On Solstice Day, you have to get yourself up high on the northern ridge that rims around Kingston. You need to spend the whole day up there, high on the slope, meditating in your trance state, like I showed you. Crystal will find you, and you two can go look for Jade on the mainland.”
“I need to talk to the king!” Jenka’s dream-self started to remember thoughts from his wakeful consciousness. “I have to tell him about his son!” He was suddenly alarmed, and a
little more aware of where he was and who he was talking to. “The Goblin King has Prince Richard,” he told Zahrellion. “And the sparkling blue he bonded with was killed. I saw it all through Jade’s eyes, but now I don’t know where Jade’s gone. He has to be hiding from the mudged dragons. The frontier is thick with them.”
“You watched Royal get killed through Jade's eyes?” Zahrellion’s surprise was only overshadowed by her sudden sadness. Glum sorrow, and her growing fatigue, crept up on her and latched hold, threatening to pull her from Jenka’s dream.
“Aye,” said Jenka worriedly. “Royal told me that the Goblin King’s wyrm took him toward Demon's Lake. You told me that the lake was called Demon's Lake because of the wind blowing across the grottoes, but I think it’s because that’s where the nightshade has always made his lair. That’s where the Goblin King took the Crown Prince. I’m sure of it.”
Zahrellion was starting to fade. Her mind was already stretched thin, and this particular form of High Magic was exhausting. She needed to ask a thousand questions now, but couldn’t manage to form a single one of them into words. She did what she needed to do most, which was just as important. She reminded Jenka to be up on the slope of the northern ridge on Solstice Day. After that, she faded out of his dream completely.
*** * ***
Jenka woke to the insistent, licking tongue of Mysterian’s dog. It was a pitiful looking hound. He half remembered that he had been following a similar creature in his dream, but those images were already fading from his mind. The old Hazeltine seemed to have done well for herself, for the room she had put him up in was as big as the entire hut Jenka and his mother shared back home in the foothills. Thinking of Crag, and the forested valleys that surrounded it, put him in a stale mood. He was terribly worried for his mother, for Jade, and for Prince Richard as well.
A glance at his surroundings reminded him that he was no longer impotent. He wasn’t in the dungeon cell anymore. He wanted to do something, but he needed to eat first. He had a bear’s hunger gnawing at his belly, and he didn’t want to go off half askew. He needed a plan.
With the frisky mutt in tow, he found Mysterian in her hot, tile-floored, sunlit kitchen. She was humming over a pot full of something that had an unsavory, alchemical smell to it. The dog went immediately to her side, sat on his haunches, and looked up at her expectantly. Jenka noticed for the first time that the dog had bald patches on its hind side.
“This en't no food, Slake. You remember what happened the last time you tasted my brew,” she told the dog, as if he could understand her plainly. Then she looked at Jenka and forced a tired smile. “Keep inside, De Swasso. Stay away from the glass, too.” A stern, serious look erased the friendly grin from her wrinkled old face. “There’s a library upstairs if you know your letters. Find a thicker volume and hunker down. Those Kingsmen are out there in the city hunting for you, and we have a bit to talk about later.” She left her wooden stirring stick swirling around the kettle on its own, and pulled a piece of bread from a loaf. She cut him some cheese from a slab as she spoke. “It won’t be safe for you to move about Kingston. Just after we slipped the castle gates, they started rounding up the few men King Blanchard left behind and started searching homes in the seedier quarters of the city. Rumor has it that the queen has put a healthy bounty out on you, because the cell guard told her you were raising a ruckus about knowing were that dragon took the prince.”
“Aye,” he nodded. “I do know where he’s ended up, but it’s not where his dragon took him. That wyrm is dead now, and the prince is in grave danger.” As an afterthought, he asked, “How long is it until Solstice Day? How long was I in the dungeon?”
“The dragon that took the prince is dead?” She had paled considerably, but her face showed no emotion. “The day after morrow is the Day of Solstice.” She cocked her head curiously and sniffled. “You just said, 'his dragon,' as if the creature belonged to the prince. What did you mean? How do you know these things? Just how wormy are you?”
Jenka had just taken a bite of the offered ham. He was chewing and couldn’t answer her question. He was about to tell her that he knew these things the very same way he knew where the dragon’s tear was, but he never had the chance.
Three booming knocks came at the door, and Jenka’s heart was suddenly threatening to burst out of his chest. The dog went berserk, growling and barking, its uncut nails clicking and clattering on the tiled floor, as it darted off to voice its displeasure at the front door. Before Jenka could even think, there was more pounding and some muted cursing to go along with it.
“Hold still,” she ordered. “If you hear me start cackling like I’m crazy, then creep up them stairs and out the window at the end of the hall. The roofs will lead you to the end of the block. There’s a hawker's lot down there, and you can blend in until they leave.”
Jenka’s heart was racing, but he wasn’t afraid. If he was taken in front of the queen, then he could explain that Prince Richard desperately needed help. He hoped that it wasn’t already too late. Mysterian was about to open the door when he decided to go turn himself in, so that he could gain the queen's aid. But on his way to the door, he saw Herald duck in conspicuously and start toward him with a purpose. The grizzled, old King’s Ranger looked as relieved as he did angry as he grabbed Jenka up into a great, crushing bear hug.
“Thank the gods of man and beast, boy,” he beamed, but then his thick brows narrowed. “What’s happened to the Crown Prince, boy? What was that guard rambling about to the queen?”
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you, Herald,” Jenka heaved a heavy sigh of relief as he pushed himself away from the man. “We have to do something, but I’m not sure what, just yet,” Jenka said. “That same guard told me you were leaving on the flotilla with King Blanchard and the kingdom’s host.”
“Host?” Herald had to bite back a sarcastic laugh. “That was no host. It was a mess of boys and shopkeepers and such, but never mind that, boy.” Herald looked as if he was stretched to his limits. “What of Prince Richard? That is where our duty lies.”
Jenka noticed that Mysterian’s ear was piqued to the conversation. He had just been about to tell her the whole of it too, so this would save him an extra telling.
“You’re not going to understand some of this, Herald, but here it goes,” said Jenka. “I am bonded to the dragon called Jade. Zahrellion is bonded with the white wyrm called Crystal, and Prince Richard was bonded to the big blue that snatched him up at the preliminaries.”
“You told me all this back in the dungeon,” Herald interrupted. “But you just said the Crown Prince was bonded with the blue. What happened?”
“It was killed by a gigantic, red-scaled mudge,” Jenka waved a hand in front of his face and sighed with frustration. “Just listen. All of that happened after Prince Richard was taken by Gravelbone and his nightshade. They took the prince to the grottoes by Demon's Lake. I’m sure of it.”
“That demon has the Crown Prince?” Mysterian asked incredulously. “Why haven’t you told me any of this?” Her tone was scolding, and more than a little angry, but moreover she seemed suddenly stricken. Her entire demeanor had changed.
“I was just about to tell you,” he indicated Herald, and shrugged. He wasn’t sure why she suddenly seemed so concerned. Up until he had gone to sleep earlier, all she had talked about was the dragon’s tear Jade’s mother had cried.
“He’s alive, though?” asked Herald.
“Aye,” answered Jenka. “As far as I know, he is.”
“What good would the Crown Prince do him dead, Ranger?” asked Mysterian weakly.
“I see your point,” conceded Herald. “He’s probably just a bartering token.”
“That he is,” Mysterian told them, as she eased into the kitchen and took a seat at the table. “But not for no troll war, or nothing of the sort. If the Goblin King noodles Richard’s brain then we’ll all be in a fix when he takes the throne, even more so when the Time of Confliction is upon us
. That’s what this is about. We Hazeltines were the ones who predicted Gravelbone’s return, and if you know your history, then you’ll know that it’s true. It’s been one hundred and forty three years now since Shtaro portended that Gravelbone would return in one hundred. She was off by almost half a century. He is evil incarnate, and he will tamper with the Crown Prince’s mind and then barter him back for one concession or another, just like you suggested. Then, all the fargin demon has to do is wait for Richard to take the throne and start doing his bidding.”
“How will we know?” Jenka asked dubiously.
“His dragon would have known,” she replied. “It’s a shame that he had to meet his end. Royal was magnificent.”
“How did you know his name?” Jenka asked quickly. He hadn’t told her the blue's name, and was suddenly very suspicious.
“Where do you think Prince Richard and Royal met and conversed, De Swasso, in the king’s garden? I think not. Old Blanchard would have had Royal’s head decorating the wall opposite the wyrm’s twin. I helped them keep their secrets, so to speak.”
“What is all of this?” Herald asked. “What are you two talking about? We have to do something.”
“You have to go tell the queen, Herald,” Jenka told him. “Have swifters on the wing as soon as possible. Have the men at Port form a battalion and send them up into the grottoes to get him.”
“While you do that, Jenka and I will work a little magic here and see if we can’t come up with something too,” Mysterian told Herald. She had stood, and was now ushering him towards the door. “But don’t you go snitching the boy’s whereabouts to the notables or the queen.”
“I’ll not even respond to that, witch,” Herald retorted. “My honor is unquestionable. I’m a fargin King’s Ranger, and don’t you forget it.”
The Royal Dragoneers (Dragoneers Saga) Page 19