A few loping strides later, he nearly ran right into two more of the flying spellcasters and the small troop of foot soldiers over which they were hovering. The blue stuff came at him and Poops from two directions this time, and at least two arrows had been loosed.
Vanx didn’t think he would survive the moment, but what hurt him worse was that he’d seen one of the shafts had been loosed at Poops. It was coming right for its mark, and there was nothing Vanx could do.
He squeezed his eyes shut, just as flame consumed everything before him, and a roar as loud as it was familiar filled him with fiery rage.
He looked at Poops. The mostly charred arrow that had struck him hadn’t even broken the skin. There was a bald spot, though, and the dog was licking a growing blister from the heat of the molten metal head that had given him a thump.
With another blast of her breath, and a sweep of her mighty tail, Pyra cleared the area, and after Vanx climbed up her side and got situated, Poops ran up and hopped into his lap.
Vanx loosed an arrow at the remaining foot soldier he could see, and then another lobbing, long shot at an approaching wyrm, but then they were moving swiftly, gaining speed and altitude both. Eventually, he was forced to put the weapon away before the wind took it from him.
Vanx tried to see Kelse, and where she’d fallen, and was saddened when he did. The green wyrm and his two friends were being swarmed over by dazed soldiers. At least they were manacled and marched away, instead of killed.
That crazy old wizard is right, Poops, Vanx said. They are the bait he will use to trap us.
What crazy old wizard? Pyra asked.
He said he was the greatest wizard who ever lived. Vanx tried not to think about what was about to happen to Chelda and Zeezle, but he and Pyra both understood that if they tried to save them now, they’d just get captured, too.
The dragon half chuckled. Take me to him.
Then take us near the Octron you came here through. Pyra banked them in a slightly different direction, but it was only a heartbeat later that they were in a different sky. Vanx looked around and saw that Pyra had teleported them there.
If we use the tower again, we can return with an unexpected army.
But the Paragonss had been expecting usss when we cames, Pyra responded.
It had its minions ready to attack us when we arrived, too, Vanx said. So maybe that isn’t such a good idea.
You fool. The old wizard’s voice broke into the conversation. You should go retrieve the Emerald Earth Stone and use it with the Paragon’s true name, as I instructed. It may be the only way to save your friends, now. Especially the dragon.
Vanx felt Pyra reach into his mind and find his memory of the map. He also felt the depth of the connection between the wizard and Pyra. They were communicating now, and excluding him from the exchange.
The old coot once said he was the one who had summoned the massive amounts of wealth into the place Pyra called home. He’d seen her lair, and Vanx still hadn’t believed a word of it, until now.
Then Vanx was allowed back into the discussion.
You may have to deal with the dwarves without Pyra, because—
Because I hate dwarvesss, Pyra finished for him.
She will wait for you, the master wizard continued. But you don’t have time to dally. I wish I could warn you about the wards placed on the stone, but they were never revealed to me.
What are we waiting for, then? Vanx shrugged. “Let’s-a-go-a-questing,” he sang an old ballad sarcastically, but changed the rest of the words. “A-questing for some gold, while our friends are held captive by a nasty blue toad.”
Poops wiggled and resituated himself in front of Vanx. His familiar’s thoughts told Vanx that he should trust the wizard and Pyra, which he had already decided to do.
Dealing with dwarves, old mines, and magic stones hadn’t even been part of the plan he was making. It seemed absurd, but the way the wizard spoke of the magical gem, the reverence and fear in his tone, and more than that, Pyra’s confidence, reassured Vanx.
If something was dangerous enough to put fear in the greatest wizard in the world, and the queen of fire dragons, then it had to be extremely powerful.
Chapter Thirteen
I’ve lived in a castle,
and I’ve lived in a cell.
Let me tell you true my friend,
both can seem like hell.
Pyra landed at the edge of a meadow, where the trees met the forest. First Poops, then Vanx, slid off of the hot-scaled dragon.
I wills snot leave the area, and I willss come backs rights here, Pyra said. Buts no farther.
She must have seen Vanx unfolding his map, for she added, The entrance to the mine is there.
Vanx followed her pointing wing claw. A short hike away was an old, heavily-shored mine shaft opening.
Vanx wanted to ask her why she hated dwarves, but since they were at the very edge of dwarven territory, and the browning landscape around her looked to be about to burst into flames, he decided not to bring it up. He gave her foreleg an awkward hug, then he and Poops started toward the (hopefully abandoned) mine, where some young trickster had hidden away a powerful artifact.
It seemed like something out of the old songs he sang in the taverns around Parydon, but then again, the last few years he’d lived on the edge of death so much, he was starting to get used to it. He wondered if it would be brash to write a ballad about oneself? After all, a great red dragon had just carried him here, and then leapt into the sky before his eyes. Who better to pen those verses than the one who’d experienced them?
As they neared the entrance, thoughts of Zeezle, and what they might be doing to Chelda, forced him to focus.
Warded by a trickster.
Vanx saw the first ward just as Poops tripped it, and after a moment of total panic, he had to laugh. Poops didn’t think it was very funny, though, and he went yipping and squawking away, only to turn and dart back to Vanx’s side.
The illusion of thousands of bats screeching and screaming as they poured out of the mine continued for quite a while. After the illusion finally subsided and Poops was calm again, Vanx led them into the opening. He sank into his familiar’s mind, sharing the dog’s thoughts, and began to see and smell the world from the canine perspective. His ability to process that information with his half-Zythian, half-human mind gave him a superior sense of awareness. The minimal light that filtered in was sufficient for them to see by. This meant he wouldn’t need a torch or any other man-made light. But, if it came to something drastic, he had a few different spells of illumination he could choose from.
Being able to tell where the air was flowing, and the types of animals that had been moving about, helped them negotiate the safest route. There were places that had been avoided, and others that had been well used. He sensed a few unreleased magical creations as they passed them, leaving them untriggered; what piqued Vanx’s curiosity, though, was that this wasn’t some simple mine shaft. These stone walls were intricately carved, showing depictions of great battle scenes, mostly between dwarves and dragons. The two enemies fought in massive underground chambers, or on the edges of the sharply-peaked mountains that seemed prevalent on this side of the world.
This was probably why Pyra hated them so much.
Vanx wondered if she feared them. It was made quite clear as they went along that the dwarves that made this place hated dragons, and would probably try to kill one on sight. He doubted Pyra was afraid. She probably just wanted to avoid diverting herself from the greater plan of getting Chelda, Kelse and Zeezle free without getting killed.
With that thought in mind, Vanx stepped right on a stone that sank a tad, and he knew he’d tripped another ward.
Poops jumped from behind him, as a slab of stone fell and blocked their exit, and the light.
“There has to be another way out,” Vanx said aloud, even though he didn’t have to. Poops was sending shivers of fear down his spine, and he knew his voice sometimes sooth
ed his pup’s worry. “Let’s be more careful and give ourselves some illumination.”
Vanx understood Poops’s new fear then. In the brief darkness, a dozen or more terrible-looking insects had crept up on them. The sudden light sent them skittering away, but not before Vanx’s heart nearly exploded in his chest. It took him a few moments to gather himself, for they’d been seconds away from being ripped apart and devoured by giant roaches. It was pure luck that he’d decided to cast the light spell just then.
The magical glow radiated from an orb that hovered a few feet over Vanx as he moved. It kept the huge bugs at bay, but Poops was growling and barking at the ones he sensed were getting close.
In all his life, Vanx had never been one to feel sorry for himself. Not when the full-blooded Zythians had beat him and mocked him in his youth; not when his mother died; not when he’d been taken prisoner by Duke Martin in Highlake; not even against the Hoar Witch, had he ever felt defeated. But he was starting to think the Paragon Dracus was just too powerful. Gallarael was dead, and the others were dead, or the Paragon’s prisoners. The damn thing had hundreds of thousands of men under its control here. What good was this Emerald Earth Stone? What could he do with it?
Destroy it at the altar, Poops repeated the wizard’s instruction from his memory.
“We have to find it first,” Vanx shrugged, eyeing the dog curiously.
The carved depictions in this part of the tunnel were older, and worn a bit more. There were a few slimy pods of what looked to be egg sacks held in the nooks and crannies by webs, and there was a startlingly large creature resembling a lizard, with eyes as white as milk, up in a high corner, but it was most likely blinded by Vanx’s light, for it didn’t move at all.
These carved images were of dwarves carrying buckets of water filled from a stream that trailed off a mountain waterfall. They were pouring them into a hole in a wall. The opposite wall depicted a city under attack, and the dwarves retreating into the ground. But the wall showing the dwarves filling the hole with water held Vanx’s attention. He could barely make it out, but just behind the wall with a hole in it, in the depths of the carving, was a stone door exactly like the one that had fallen behind them, only it was halfway up.
Suddenly, a small piece of stone popped off the wall and hit him on the cheek. Another pop and sprinkle of flaked stone came, then it was happening all around them.
Run, Poops, he voiced as he started ahead, but then stopped when he saw what was happening. Thorny vines were sprouting out of the stone, and growing at such a rapid rate as to cut them off and impale them. He dove and caught Poops’s collar just in time for the pup to avoid a finger-long spike growing right out of an already wrist-thick vine.
He had to think quickly. In moments, they would both be impaled and then squeezed to death by the relentless growth.
Chapter Fourteen
Under estimating someone,
‘cause you think you have the deck,
is usually when you find yourself,
dangling by your neck.
Vanx remembered how Pyra had saved him and Poops earlier, and before the thorns could restrict his movement, he cast his most potent wizard fire spell.
To his surprise, it worked, causing the vines to shrivel away, and unblock their path. It was a short-lived moment of triumph, though, for Poops sensed something, or somethings, not far ahead of them. The dog started barking furiously, sending streaks of agitated alarm up Vanx’s spine.
Vanx cast another light spell, one he could send ahead to see what was waiting in the shadows. He was satisfied when his illumination revealed that they were in a short hall that led to a larger circular chamber. In the heart of the round room was a large stone hand reaching up out of the floor. It was holding a fat green emerald.
There were also three spike-covered feline creatures that were as out of place here as they were oversized. These were the vicious, quill-covered cats many ship captains kept on board to keep the harbor rats out of their cargo holds, only these were almost the size of haulkattens without all the bulk.
Vanx had seen a lyna tear a mouse to pieces and devour it so quickly, it didn’t even leave a stain. Now he felt like a mouse on a ship, and he didn’t like it at all, but Poops’s animosity toward the felines heated Vanx’s blood enough to help him master his fear. Besides, he told himself, they are magically fortified. There was no reasonable way to feed three real lyna cats that size down here, just to guard a stone. It had to be an illusion.
Guarding the stone is all they were doing, too. Even though the predatory cats saw him, and snarled his way, they kept making their same lazy, protective circle around the hand holding the prize.
Vanx had to wonder if the hand was connected to something that was frozen under the floor. He doubted it, but nothing would surprise him at this point.
With his sword in hand, he stalled Poops’s aggravation with a harsh thought-command. He then ran, doing a complete forward flip, over the creature between him and the gem. It leapt and rolled with him, snapping its teeth, and it swiped at him like an alley cat twisting after a slow pigeon.
It was a close call, and Vanx saw just how sharp those claws were when they passed a finger’s breadth before his eyes. These lyna might be made of magic, he decided, but they were not illusions. They were real enough to slice him to shreds.
Luckily for Vanx, he was no slow pigeon. He landed on his feet, rolling into a somersault and stood upright beside the hand holding the emerald.
He gave a grin back at Poops, plucked the stone from its place, and started away. From the elevated dais, his jump over the lyna cats would be even easier than before.
He took a step back to position himself for a stride into another flip, using the hand itself to leap from. As soon as he took the first step, the arm bent at the elbow and reached down, quick as can be, and grabbed hold of his ankle.
Vanx fell hard on his face, and was momentarily caught up in total disbelief.
Once the hand had hold of him, the whole appendage stayed as still as stone again, seemingly content to keep him there.
No matter how far he turned and twisted, he couldn’t pull his foot free.
Now the giant lyna cat he’d taunted was coming for him, while the other two turned to give him their attention as well. Vanx shook his head. One of them leapt close and clawed at his face.
It was all he could do to stash the emerald and avoid those slicers.
Poops overcame Vanx’s restraining spell then, and charged as fast as his four legs could carry him, but he suddenly stopped and skidded to a halt.
Vanx shattered the arm with a concussive blast that might have skinned his ankle to the bone, and definitely tore off the side of his boot. “Go on, Poops,” Vanx called. It’s nice to know you could overcome your fear of cats and come for me.
No fear cats, Poops barked his protest. Vanx darted by the lyna nearest him. It was peppered with whatever material the arm had been made of, and most likely only stunned. Vanx passed it limping, but after a few strides, began to trust his wounded ankle.
They were soon jogging side by side, being careful to place their feet and paws where they’d placed them on the way in, but then they came to the fallen stone door.
Vanx took a few deep breaths. He was glad to see that the lyna cats were bound to their part of the cavern and were not pursuing them. He searched the area around the stone for a hole, and wondered if a big hole, like the one in the depiction, was on the other side of the door.
The area was just a hall and though he looked and looked, all he found was a little hole about the size of his wrist.
He wished he had a stick, for his family sword was just a bit too wide to stick in the opening, which he guessed had a catch or spring down inside it. After a while of racking his mind for a way out, he just slid to the floor and sighed.
Food? voiced the dog.
Poops was hungry, and Vanx was, too.
They feasted from Vanx’s backpack on stuff the zwar had pr
epared. It was spicy, but good. Poops drank four handfuls of water, and a handful of watered wine, too. Then, while Vanx walked the floor, looking more closely at the depiction, the dog walked a tight circle a few times and lay down. He looked at Vanx and cocked his head curiously, then he yawned, a tongue-curling yawn, and went to sleep.
There was a way out, Vanx was sure. He just had to find it. He would have teleported them beyond the door, but it was made to disallow any sort of magical passage Vanx could think of, for over the time he stood there, he tried them all.
Then he had to piss.
Warded by a trickster. The thought came to his mind, and he looked at the hole in the stone, near the door. It was the perfect height.
He thought back at the depiction of the dwarves carrying buckets. After a few long moments, he pictured in his mind the whole of the image. It took a long time to rebuild the image in his head, but he did so, and nodded with confidence when he was done. The mountain stream that the dwarves were using to fill the containers was really a cleverly drawn giant, pissing on the mountainside, causing a waterfall of urine to fall and fill the buckets.
Vanx looked at the hole in the other wall. He somehow just knew it would work. Anyone who had to piss while stuck here would figure it out. He laughed when the door started sliding up as he filled the hole with his urine.
“Go on, Poops, let’s get under it as swiftly as we can.”
Vanx waited until the dog sauntered through, then finished. He didn’t bother with lacing his britches, for he feared the door would fall back down at any moment. He dove through, grabbing his pack instead, and began fixing his pants once he was on the other side.
He was forced to hurry, for on the other side of the door was the pale-eyed lizard violently trying to pull Poops into its toothy maw by way of a long, stretched tongue, which had wrapped completely around the now wide-eyed pup.
Chapter Fifteen
Some days are full of sunshine.
The Far Side of Creation (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 7) Page 6