The Wizard and the Warlord (The Wardstone Trilogy Book Three)

by M. R. Mathias

  The passage opened onto another circular chamber, but this one was a crossroads of sorts. It had no upside-down pool of quicksilver, and no strange symbol etched into the floor.

  The corridor they took continued on and eventually another crossed it. They went left, and after slowly sloping downward for what might have been a full hour, the humidity became intense. The air was steamy, almost cloudy. They ended up in a vast, naturally formed cavern that opened up onto a body of slow boiling water. Steam rose in clouds, making it impossible to sense the size of what was beyond. A large, well built barge, complete with a uniformed crew of capable-looking giants, was waiting to receive them.

  “Welcome to the Cauldron,”said a man whose uniform wasn’t green, but black trimmed in emerald. Hyden figured him to be the captain of the barge. “You’re about to cross the moat of all moats.”

  “If the castle rises up out of the steam cloud miles above us,” Hyden looked at Phen and Oarly, all three with eyes wild and full of wonder, “then the structure that lies between, hidden in the steam, must be grand indeed.”

  “By Doon, a thousand, thousand dwarves could live in such a place.”

  “I still can’t believe we were teleported,” Phen said to Hyden. “That’s a spell I have to learn.”

  “How could you think about spells?” Hyden asked as they moved up the giant-sized gangplank to the barge’s deck. “We’re about to see… about to be inside a castle city that reaches up into the very heavens.”

  “I am thinking about the castle, Hyden,” Phen said. “They had to use magic—probably teleportation spells—to get the upper reaches of such a place built. Just think of it.” It was clear Phen was calculating and estimating in his ever quizzical mind. Figuring out how such a construction had been erected would probably keep him thinking and imagining for days.

  Talon leapt from Phen’s shoulder and glided to the deck rail at the front of the barge. Once he was settled he began preening himself. Telgra concentrated on scratching Spike behind the ears while Corva helped Dostin onto the boat. The lieutenant and his young men were gawking as much as the rest of them. They huddled close and spoke to themselves as the barge eased away from the cavern’s dock.

  As they slid across the water out into the denser cloud of steam, it became a near white-out.

  “How hot is the water?” Hyden asked Cade.

  “Hot enough to boil the flesh off of your bones in just a moment,” he answered. “And that’s just at the surface. The frigid mountain air keeps the top of the cauldron relatively cool. Just a few dozen feet down and it would boil your bones to mush.”

  “No serpents to worry about here, then,” said Oarly, stretching up on tiptoes to look over the rail, instead of ducking to look down under it.

  “That’s not true, Master Dwarf,” Cade said. “There are a few creatures who love these waters. Dragon kin, most assuredly. After all, what is a serpent, but a wingless water dragon.”

  “The serpent I cut in half was more like an eel than a dragon,” Oarly said. “It smelled fishy and had suction cups on its underside, like an octanomus.”

  “It’s an octerapus,” Phen corrected with a grin at Oarly’s claim of halving the serpent. “He didn’t cut it in half, Cade; he just cut off the tip of its tail.”

  ***

  Cade, after realizing that neither the dwarf nor the marble-skinned boy were jesting, shuddered.

  It was hard to imagine that these people, at least the two he was speaking to, and Hyden Hawk, had commanded dragons and killed demons.

  With just a little unease showing in his normally confident voice, Cade said, “Master Oarly, I assure you that the things in this lake are nothing like you’ve described. These beasts could swallow this barge whole, if they were so inclined.”

  Oarly’s gulp was audible.

  Chapter 36

  Captain Hodge led his group toward the Dragon Tooth. His three flat barges were in a line gliding swiftly through the narrow channel, approaching the formation from the west. As Bzorch had commanded, they split up. Hodge’s group, with two dragon gun crews and fifty of the best men, made a wide arc around the westward side of the spire.

  The two groups had been separated for two days now. The plan called for them all to converge on the spire this day when the sun was at its zenith. Hodge was worried because his group was going to be late.

  The maze of channels that would allow the boats passage had stymied them. Three times they had dead-ended, and once they’d spent more than an hour completely lost in vegetation so thick that they couldn’t even see the fang. Now it was midday and Hodge was supposed to be converging on the formation. He hoped that Bzorch would understand. They’d done the best they could, and now they were hurrying toward the black shark fin as quickly as possible.

  Gzorith, the older of the two dragon gunners on Captain Hodge’s barge, noticed the captain’s grim look. “Bzorch will not hold it against you,” he grunted reassuringly. “It’s not like we had a chart or a map.” The big savage-looking breed giant paused to bat away a pest that was buzzing around his head. “The time it took to find channels that cut across the current of the river’s natural flow weren’t accounted for.”

  “True spoken,” Hodge nodded. “But it’s not wise to point out your commander’s failures or misjudgments.” He chuckled away a little of his unease. Some loud, cackling creature sounded off deep in the green density around them. “Especially when something might eat you because of them.”

  Gzorith boomed out a laugh. “I’ll tell Bzorch we all planned badly,” the breed giant boasted. “My kindred respect those who speak boldly. I don’t care if it’s a woman child who sees my mistakes and tells me about them. I’d rather know than not.”

  “Bzorch won’t eat you, though,” the commander joked. “He might eat me, if he had the chance.”

  “You’re wrong, Captain,” Gzorith said, growing serious. “When we were imprisoned on Coldfrost he would have eaten me quick. Do not let Lord Bzorch’s civility fool you. He is the lord of my people, whether the king says so or not. He is the most savage and brutal of us, which is why he holds his command. We not only respect him, but we fear him, as well. Lord Bzorch would lose respect for me if I let his errors go unchecked. He is constantly trying to be better and smarter. Without breed like him, my people would probably revert back to our more savage nature.”

  Captain Hodge didn’t know what to say to any of that. He walked to the side rail, leaned out, and glanced back at the two boats following in their wake. It was hot and sticky, and clouds of gnats were everywhere. All the men were still standing ready, but since they hadn’t seen anything more than a few family groups of Zard they had grown bored.

  The sound of someone shouting came to his ears. He froze in place, trying to make out the man’s words, but an eruption of chaos from the opposite side of the barge drowned them out. He was just about to push off the rail and go see what this disturbance was when a large splash sounded alongside the craft below him. He looked down curiously, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late.

  An arm-thick tentacle lashed up and wrapped around his neck and began pulling him over the rail. Gzorith dropped his dragon gun and grabbed the captain’s feet just before they disappeared.

  “Canzal! Gun! Gun! Gun!” the breed giant yelled at its kinsman.

  Shouts were erupting from up and down the train of barges. A cloud of angry red finger-sized hornets were swarming out of the jungle, stinging the soldiers. The shadow of something large slowly crept by, eclipsing the sun for a moment. Gzorith ignored it and, as if he were in a rope tug contest, he yanked back savagely on the captain’s legs.

  Canzal leaned over the rail, aimed at where the tentacle met the water, and fired. A small cloud of red bloomed a few feet below the surface.

  Gzorith was yanked to the rail. Pulling back with all he had, something suddenly gave way and he and the captain lurched backward. Hodge landed on Gzorith in a jumble on the deck.

&n
bsp; “I thought we’d lost you, Captain,” Gzorith said between breaths as he staggered to his feet.

  “He’s not listening, Gzor,” Canzal said. He pointed at the headless corpse of Captain Hodge. Blood was still oozing out of the stump in thick pulses.

  “Ahhhhgh!” one of the ropemen yelled as the line attached to the spear Canzal had fired tangled around his legs. Before anyone could even think, the breed giant was dragged across the deck and over the side of the barge. Canzal’s powerful hands gripped the rail for an instant, but he was being pulled so hard that they couldn’t keep hold.

  Gzorith ran to his dragon gun and picked it up before it got caught in the tangle. From somewhere on their barge, men began to scream as the hornets found their flesh. Gzorith saw the dark shadow gliding across the surface of the channel at the edge of the tangled shoreline. He looked up. A Choska carrying a half-naked woman who strongly resembled the Dragon Queen passed casually over them. Gzorith was so transfixed by the sight that he didn’t even see or hear the barge behind him as it came up out of the water in a twisting roll, only to smash down on the deck of the trailing boat. Men shrieked and screamed and thrashed in the water as some were dragged under and some just disappeared in swirling clouds of crimson gore.

  Gzorith raised his dragon gun and took careful aim at the Choska’s chest. He followed it a few feet and then fired. He knew without a doubt that his shaft was flying true, but he never had the chance to see it hit the Choska. Some bright red-winged thing the size of a small human raked his eyes with a jagged claw. He managed to bat it out of the air, but by then his eyes were full of blood and the barge was lifting askew. He would never know it, but the coil of line connected to the missile tangled on the deck. When his barbed shaft tip was only a few feet away from piercing the Choska’s heart, the line pulled taut and yanked the spear back toward the ground.

  Gzorith, Canzal, and the rest of Captain Hodge’s group were gone. Only the corner of one barge sticking up out of the water remained to prove they’d been there. For at least a hundred yards, the water was red with death and churning thick with hungry swamp predators.

  ***

  Bzorch saw the Choska flying to the west of the Dragon’s Fang. It had spooked the strange green swamp troll the breed giant had been observing through the looking glass. It was obvious to him that there was a sizable presence of Zard, but he couldn’t see many of them. Fire pits, trampled trails, refuse, and other signs of an encampment were everywhere, but there were no Zard. Apparently, they either let the swamp troll run amok in their encampment while they were away, or they were hiding from it. More likely, Bzorch decided, they were hiding to ambush him and his men. It was also clear that the Choska was observing Captain Hodge from above. Bzorch was almost glad that the captain was so far away and behind schedule. The plan he was now forming in his mind was even better than the other.

  Since the Dragon’s Tooth rose straight up out of the water at all but the southern end, access to the rocky formation was limited. If the Choska was sheltering there, Bzorch decided, it would have to be up in the old dragon hole. Bzorch ordered a man to untie the safety boat, a small four-man rower. He’d put his arm through his coil of line and hefted it over his head so that it hung across his body. He ordered his men to stay back in the relative cover. They had camouflaged their barges with branches and greenery they’d cut from the jungle. Anchored in the right location, they would be hard to find.

  Bzorch was going to climb the fang. Its curved shape made the western face look easy to ascend. He ordered his ropeman to stay back. He wanted to take this risk alone.

  “If I do not return, tell my cousin Gzorith that he is to take over command and work with the captain,” Bzorch told his ropeman and the barge master. He then ordered the two humans in the safety boat to begin rowing him toward the fang. “Watch the wormhole, get under it, and wait for my signal.”

  The barge master nodded, as did the other breed. As soon as Bzorch was off, they went about putting the willow branches and swamp grass back over the place where the safety boat had been lashed.

  Bzorch suddenly realized that it was far too quiet around the fang. This kind of silence was unnatural. Even the insects seemed to have fled. He began to wonder if Captain Hodge and his group hadn’t drawn the whole encampment to them. A glance westward told him that the Choska was still preoccupied.

  “As soon as I’m out of the boat, start rowing back,” he said.

  “We’re coming up on the face now,” one of the rowers said.

  Bzorch turned and looked up at the western face of the fang. The sun was on it now; midday had come and gone. He realized that his shadow would be a long, drooping line on the rock. He would have to hurry. If the Choska came around and caught him halfway up, clinging like a lizard, he would surely be killed.

  “Get me directly under that hole up there,” Bzorch commanded again. When the oarsmen had him in position, he checked to see where the Choska was. It was well to the west, circling slowly over the captain’s group. He didn’t hesitate. Like some big, lumbering gorilla, he began moving upward. Three hundred feet was a long way to climb, but Bzorch went about it with a purpose.

  About a third of the way up, a shadow sped across him and made his heart blast through his chest. Looking up and craning his neck, he saw that it was only the shadow of a big dactyl, not the Choska. Still, the creature showed him its bright pink maw and hissed at his trespass. After checking to see where the Choska was once more, he resumed his climb. Luckily, the demon was still focused on what was going on with Captain Hodge’s group.

  Bzorch couldn’t believe it when he finally pulled himself into the wormhole of the old red dragon’s layer. After he caught his breath, he pulled the looking glass from his belt and looked out westwardly to see what the Choska was so intently circling. The sun reflected back up at him in a bright coppery ray, making it hard to pick out details, but what had happened was clear. From his vantage point he could see a swath of marsh water littered with debris and stained red with blood. One of the three barges was half submerged, the others completely under water. The long, loggish shapes of several snappers eased about the pools searching for more men to eat. Bzorch swore under his breath. He saw that the Choska was now moving toward the camouflaged barges where his men were hiding. He had to move across to the eastern opening to see where they were hidden. As he went, he noticed that there was no sign of anything living in the cavernous hollow that opened up off of the wormhole. All he saw were bones from ancient meals and some hardened chunks of grizzly pelt piled in the spaces between. He wasn’t sure now if the Choska was roosting here.

  To his horror, and anger, a monstrous swarm of dactyls was clouding around the concealed boats. The men weren’t able to stay hidden. The big, sharp-beaked birds were diving and slashing at them. The shadow of the Choska swept across the dark green collage of marsh below. Bzorch’s head shot up and located it in the sky. He nearly tumbled out of the wormhole when he saw her on its back.

  Was it her?

  Holding his breath and willing his heart to keep beating, Bzorch put his looking glass to his eye and found her in it. He wasn’t sure if he should feel relief or not when he saw the face. There was no patch of scorched flesh over her ear, no pink teardrop scar on her cheek, but he knew in his primitive heart that it was somehow Shaella.

  He decided then that killing the Choska might not be as important as warning the High King of this discovery. A glance down at his men put a knot in his stomach. A plethora of life was swarming over the boats. Snakes, dactyls, and some huge, tentacled thing that was only half in the water, were all attacking. The dark channel took on a crimson sheen and, after only a few heartbeats, was only a churning mass of death.

  He was alone now.

  Bzorch found the Choska again and growled. He would survive, he told himself. He would wade back to Westland and tell King Mikahl of this bloody attack if he had to. The High King had to know that Shaella, or something very much like her, was alive.
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  He decided to use the time he had before darkness to make a plan. Alone, with no boat, it was all he could think to do.

  Chapter 37

  Once inside the huge island castle of Afdeon it was hard to judge how massive it really was. The sections of the lower floors the party was able to see were plain in appearance, other than the overproportionate size of everything. The lower floors were crude and square, and looked to be carved into the natural rock. The walls were thick and the hallways narrow. Hyden figured that this was the foundation for the towering construction above, its function obviously more important than form.

  They rode up on a disk-shaped lift. The large platform had several divans and benches. One was even built for human-sized folk.

  “Look, Hyden,” Phen whispered as they marveled at it all. “Next to the giants and their furniture, Oarly looks like a bearded toddler.”

  Both Phen and Hyden were disappointed when they learned that the elevating disk was a mechanical device and not magical. Cade explained that it worked by way of a system of counter weights and pulleys powered by shafts and chambers that vented natural steam from the Cauldron.

  They passed hundreds of floors on the half-day ride, but they were only given glimpses of the vast variety of things that were on them. Some lower floors held cavernous pillared rooms full of livestock, bundled bales of grain, crated vegetables, and all sorts of goods and stores. Most of the floors opened up on long hallways with doors on either side. A few held similar corridors with merchant shops. On one of these floors, about an hour into the ride, a young hawker presented them with meals of devil goat meat wrapped in flat bread. The offerings were so large that no one could manage more than half of the meal, save for Jicks, who stuffed himself full.