A Plague of Wizards

by Wesley Allison

  “Now you see the hole in the plan,” said Hsrandtuss, breaking an egg into his mouth.

  “Um, you said we were unprotected here at the headquarters—completely unprotected. Surely that means that Tokkenttot will send a force here to attack us. It will be his best chance to kill you.”

  “Yes, he will want to make sure he kills me. He really doesn’t like me. I expect him to send between two and four thousand warriors.”

  “But why? Why did you make it seem we were unprotected… or wait. Are we really unprotected?”

  “Well, as for why,” said the king. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No.”

  “We want to be part of the battle! We want to feel the glory of victory! We can’t let Tusskiqu and Slechtiss have all the fun. Can we? Maybe… maybe Tokkenttot will have enough tail to lead the attack himself? What do you think?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Terra, so off balance that she spilled all her kippers onto the dirty ground.

  “Imagine it,” said Hsrandtuss, standing up. “There we are! At the top of the hill is Hsrandtuss the king, sword in hand! Next to him is Stands Up Tall With a King, her thunder weapon in one hand and her tiny but bloodied sword in the other! All alone…”

  Several of the nearby males gurgled.

  “All alone, but for a few sturdy warriors whose names will go down in history, they face off against one or two or ten thousand warriors of Xecheon, and Yessonar be willing, a dragon!” The great king took a deep breath. “A dragon! You could not find a better death if you searched a thousand years. I have never seen a better opportunity for my death than this. It’s not a bad death for you either, Kaetarrnaya. Your father had a fine death—as you yourself said, a good exchange, but this would be much superior. The humans can sing songs about your death—the bravest young female since… since that one that you humans admire so much.”

  “Kafira.”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Your death will be infinitely superior to hers.”

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, I suppose,” said Terra. “But I wasn’t planning on dying so much this year as, well… not.”

  “You can’t always plan these things,” said Hsrandtuss. “You must take advantage of a good death when the opportunity presents itself.”

  “There is a certain amount of sense in that,” admitted Terra. “We’re not likely to find ourselves in a similar situation again soon.”

  “No,” said the king, tilting his head down to look at the ground. “Which is why I must apologize to you. Sadly, neither of us will be dying today.”

  “Bad luck,” said Terra.

  “Yes, but we will be fighting. Let us get ourselves ready.”

  Thirty minutes later, Terra was standing in her position. She had on her leather clothes and even wore her feathered headdress, though her hair had started to grow out. A camp female had touched up her paint. Half red and half black, she would have been a shock to any of the girls back in Port Dechantagne. She thought about showing up at the Likliter home to have tea with Dovie and laughed.

  “That was a happiness sound, I think,” said Hsrandtuss stepping up beside her.

  “Yes, Great King.”

  “That is what I like to hear going into battle.” He pulled out his watch again, looked at it, put it back in its pouch, and then scanned the horizon. “There! Look there!”

  A great cloud of smoke was rising above the trees. It was several miles away, but much closer than the spot from which Terra had previously seen smoke. It was different not only in location, but it quantity and quality as well. What she had seen before was the exhaust of ten giant steam engines. What she saw now was the product of those steam engines being toppled into deep subterranean caverns and the explosions that resulted. A few seconds later, similar black and white smoke rose up several miles to the east. Terra was looking from one spot to the other when, at last, she heard the explosions. They were like thunder in the distance.

  “It is no doubt a glorious and horrible battle,” said Hsrandtuss. “I don’t miss it though. I have had enough of battles fought underground. One should live and die in the sun.”

  “They are coming, Great King!” called one of the warriors.

  Hsrandtuss looked around for a moment.

  “Kaetarrnaya, come and stand with me!” He stepped up onto a spot of ground that was a few inches higher than that surrounding it, and waited for Terra to join him. “Are you prepared?”

  “Um, yes,” said Terra, unslinging her tiny sword.

  It wasn’t more than a few minutes before they could see the enemy. The warriors of Xecheon were moving up the hill in a skirmish formation. Terra was no military expert, but she judged that there were at least two thousand. They were moving at a quick pace. Her history lessons suddenly popped into her head. She could hear cousin Iolana saying, “only a fool would rush his troops toward an entrenched enemy who had the high ground.”

  “It’s just like General von Haig at Dunvall,” she said.

  “What?” asked Hsrandtuss.

  “We have the high ground.”

  “Yes, but remember, my little soft-skin, they think they outnumber us 200 to one.”

  “But they don’t?”

  The king waved his hand in a lizzie gesture that was almost but not quite the equivalent of a shrug.

  The enemy came onward. They were close enough to see that about one in ten carried not a sword or spear, but a rifle—no doubt a Bordonian model. Soon those carrying such firepower began to stop, fire, and advance while reloading, revealing that the weapons were not spring loading magazine-fed weapons like the Brech B1898, but inferior single-shot breach-loaders. Still, when bullets began whizzing by, Terra’s instinct was to drop down onto her stomach. The king put his enormous hand on her shoulder, steadying her.

  Wide-eyed, the girl’s attention was riveted on the advancing enemy, the vanguards of which were now only a few hundred feet away. She didn’t see what signal the king gave, or even if he gave one at all. Suddenly, twenty feet in front of her the ground opened up, revealing a small round pit, which had been camouflaged with a covering of dirt and brush. Inside were four warriors who quickly set up a shiny new machine gun. To the left and right, half a dozen other machine gun nests were revealed, and within a minute all were firing down at the males from Xecheon, pouring out on them a thousand times as many bullets as had been fired upward. The advance was stopped in its tracks. Within two minutes it had become a chaotic retreat back down the slope and into the forest beyond.

  “Don’t give up so easy!” cried Hsrandtuss. “Come back and fight! I will tell the thunder weapons to stop!” He looked down at Terra. “Never let it be said, I didn’t offer them a fair fight.”

  For their part, the warriors firing the machine guns gave no indication of having heard their leader or in agreeing with his idea. They continued raining down death on their enemies as longs as targets could be located. Indeed, many continued firing even after nothing but bullet-riddled trees could be seen.

  For her part, Terra was looking upward. A quick movement across the sky had caught her attention.

  “The dragon!” she shouted, pointing.

  A streak of sapphire blue was now shooting straight toward them. In truth, it was moving far to fast to make out what it was, but there really was only one possibility.

  “Yes!” cried Hsrandtuss, readying his sword. “Come to me, little god!”

  Terra supposed it was possible that the dragon heard him. Dragons were renowned for excellent hearing as well as preternatural sight. In any case, it did seem to be flying straight toward the great lizardman. It was no more than two hundred yards away, when out of the sky dropped the magnificent form of the steel dragon, intercepting it. Great Yessonar, his scales shining in the sun like a suit of armor, twisted once in the air and then flew off to the south. He was more than a hundred times the size of the sapphire dragon, so it was impossible to tell if he had eaten it or had it clutched in his great fist. W
hatever the case, the blue dragon, war god of Xecheon was gone.

  “No!” gurgled Hsrandtuss.

  He dropped his sword to the ground and a moment later, dropped down to his knees in the dirt beside it. He looked at the girl. From this position, they were almost eye-to-eye. He let out a long, slow hiss, as if he were a car tire that had been punctured.

  “I can’t believe it. That ungrateful dragon. After all I have done for him.”

  Chapter Sixteen: Engagements

  “Miss Bly, I had heard you were back in town,” said Aalwijn Finkler, with a slight bow. “It’s a pleasure you could join us this evening.”

  “Why Mr. Finkler,” said Senta. “I thought we were on a first name basis since I was ten years old. And you were what? About twelve?”

  “Something like that. Still, one doesn’t want to take anything for granted with the world’s most powerful sorceress.”

  She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Give my very best to your lovely wife. You don’t need to show me back. I see my party already.”

  “She seems a bit nervous,” he said.

  “She should be.”

  As Senta slowly made her way through the filled-to-capacity Café Ada, every eye was upon her. Her black evening dress, trimmed with beige ribbons around the hem and upon the multilayered fall over the bustle, was the height of fashion, newly arrived from Greater Brechalon. The back daringly displayed her shoulder blades and the magical dragon tattoo between them. Her small, three-point hat and gloves were matching black with beige trim. It wasn’t her expensive dress, or her hat, her gloves, her carefully arranged hair, or even her tattoo that drew their collective attention. It was the simple fact of who she was—The Drache Girl.

  She swept into her chair, not seeming to notice the member of restaurant staff who pulled it out for her, and she looked across the table. Her dinner companion bore more than a passing resemblance, tall and thin, with an expensive dress and carefully coifed hair, though hers was salmon-pink. Instead of eyes looking back, Senta saw her own reflection in gold-framed dark spectacles.

  “So, you’re not a dragon anymore, Zoey?”

  “I’m still a dragon,” her companion answered defensively. “I’m just… I enjoy this form, if it’s any of your business.”

  “It is my business. You’re my dragon.”

  “No, not really,” said Zoey, looking up toward the ceiling. “It turns out one can’t own a dragon.”

  “I didn’t say I owned you. You’re not a slave. I’m your guardian. Who else is going to teach you how to be a proper dragon? Who’s going to keep you safe until you’re grown?”

  “I found someone else to teach me. Someone powerful enough to keep me safe. He’s more powerful than you.”

  “No one’s more powerful than me,” snapped Senta.

  “He is,” she replied, primping her hair with her right hand.

  Aalwijn appeared beside the table. “Ladies, what can…”

  “Beef Dechantagne,” said Senta quickly.

  “Steamed Lobster,” said Zoey, almost before Senta had finished.

  “Right away ladies.” Aalwijn was gone as quickly as he arrived.

  Senta stared across the table for a moment.

  “Have you finally made friends with Bessemer? He really is a good role model.”

  “No, I’ve not seen Bessemer in a couple of years now.”

  “Who then?”

  “His name is Voindrazius,” said Zoey, quietly.

  “Voindrazius?” hissed Senta. “Voindrazius the dragon? Voindrazius, who terrorized the entire continent of Sumir for centuries. The one who is in the Holy Scriptures, laying waste to cities and… and… and whatever else the scriptures say he did?”

  “Yes, and he’s made friends with your precious Bessemer too.”

  “I’m gone for a little while,” snarled Senta, “and the whole world turns upside down!” She stopped and looked around. Every single face in the restaurant was turned in her direction. She snapped her fingers and every one of those faces snapped back to toward the centers of their tables. A few people cried out. A few others whimpered.

  “You didn’t even speak an incantation,” said Zoey, with an air of wonder.

  “Don’t change the subject. Voindrazius is evil.”

  “I didn’t say he was nice. I said he was powerful.”

  “This explains a lot,” said Senta.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you eating a wizard.”

  “I didn’t eat a wizard,” hissed Zoey. “I would never eat a person. You have to know that.”

  “What did you do with him then?”

  “I let him go.”

  “You let him go? You let him go, to terrorize other innocent victims?”

  “Oh, I doubt he was in any shape to bother anyone, considering the height I was at when I let go of him.” Zoey covered a large grin with her gloved hand.

  Senta giggled.

  “Um, Senta?”

  She looked up to see Aalwijn again, his head turned to look away over his left shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  “My kitchen staff may be unable to prepare your meals if they can’t see what it is they are cooking.”

  “Oh, sorry.” She snapped her fingers once again and his head slowly turned to look toward her. He reached behind his neck and rubbed. The patrons of a dozen tables all stood up and headed toward the exit.

  “I’m billing you for any lost business,” he said, hurrying away again.

  “Let me see your eyes,” Senta told the dragon in human form.

  Zoey lowered the spectacles, revealing solid pink eyes from lid to lid.

  “You know, you look a bit like my cousin Ernst. Were you copying her?”

  “Actually, I was trying to look like you. I am your dragon.”

  “Are you?”

  “Please let me come home with you,” Zoey suddenly pleaded. “Take me back and don’t hate me for the things I’ve done.”

  “What exactly have you done?” wondered Senta. “No. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. It won’t compare to what I’ve done.

  * * * * *

  Hundreds of miles to the southeast, Terra Dechantagne stomped up the last few steps to reach the top of the Great Pyramid of Yessonarah. At the top was the large square stone structure of the temple, and lying atop it, was the great steel dragon to whom the temple, the pyramid, and the city were dedicated. He lay on his stomach, his head hanging down nearly to the top of the stairs. To the lizzies, he was Great Yessonar. To the humans, he was the dragon Bessemer.

  “Hi,” said Terra.

  The dragon answered her with a long snore.

  Stepping over to just beneath the giant head, she reached up and grabbed several long whiskers and yanked them. One large steel-colored eye opened. With all parts of the eye the same color, it was almost impossible to tell which direction it was looking.

  “I said Hello.”

  “Not to make something out of nothing, but point in fact, you said, ‘Hi,’ and a god is far too important to answer to such a salutation.”

  “To the lizzies you’re a god,” she said. “I’m a human, so you’re just a dragon.”

  “A human?” His head rotated until it was upright. “Aren’t you Terra the Tyrant, Queen of the Lizzies?”

  “I’m just observing,” said Terra. “I’ve not gone native.”

  “Are you sure? I think Hsrandtuss is already planning on you being his next queen. He has a couple of openings, you know.”

  “Don’t be disgusting.”

  “Don’t fancy the king?” wondered Bessemer.

  “Not in the way you’re implying. You shouldn’t even be talking to me in that way. I’m just a little girl. My brother would have you horsewhipped… or dragon-whipped.”

  “Your brother is a little boy.”

  “Well, he has a sorceress of your acquaintance in his employ, and he insists that she’s not dead.”

  “She’s not. In fact, I can feel that sh
e has already returned to Port Dechantagne.”

  “Still,” said Terra.

  “Still what?”

  “Hsrandtuss is amazing. He’s… great, in the true sense of that word—larger than life. If I were a lizzie, I’d want to be his queen.”

  “He is great, fabulous.” The dragon grinned. “He’s epic. Still, no point in mooning over him.”

  “I’m not mooning, but maybe I’ll find a husband like him one day,” said Terra. “A human husband of course.”

  “I doubt you’ll find a human like Hsrandtuss.”

  “What about Uncle Radley?”

  “Hardly,” laughed Bessemer. “Radley Staff was a perfect man—intelligent, brave, and capable.”

  “And that’s not like Hsrandtuss?”

  “Too a degree. The problem is that your Uncle Radley had no flaw, with the possible exception of loving your aunt. As I said he was perfect. Now the only human… huh. That’s funny!”

  “What?” wondered the girl.

  “I was just about to say that the only human that came close to Hsrandtuss’s mix of strengths and weaknesses, wisdom and foibles, was your father—Terrence Dechantagne.”

  “I never had the pleasure.”

  “Of course. So what was so important that you had to tug the whispers of the most formidable being in the eastern world?”

  “The king wants to know what you did with it.”

  “Did with what?”

  “The other dragon, of course. Did you eat it?”

  “Of course I didn’t eat her. I merely took her someplace where she could do no harm until we have a chance to… um… compare notes.”

  “You’re going to convince her that she’s not the god of war?”

  “Oh, but she is. She is Xenarra, The Sapphire Dragon, Goddess of War, as sure as I’m Bessemer, God of the Sky.”

  “It’s starting to sound like a pantheon—like ancient Xygia or Argrathia.”

  “It is a pantheon,” said Bessemer.

  “And what about Zoatheria, The Coral Dragon? Does she have a place in it?”

  “She does, as soon as she decides she wants one.”

  Terra turned without another word and started down the steps. The great dragon climbed down from the temple and hopped once, stopping about halfway down the pyramid. It took the girl several minutes to reach where he now hung like a great shiny bat.