Northern Storm ac-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  As the cloud dragon worried at its neck and clawed the scales from its flanks, the fire dragon fought to stay aloft with mighty strokes of its vast wings. Despite its endeavours it sank through the sky, borne down by the weight of the cloud dragon towards the deadly embrace of the waters below. Bright scarlet blood glistened on its torn sides, drops spitting as they fell to pit the surface of the sea. The fire dragon lashed at its white tormenter with its heavy spiked tail, striking unerringly at the gaping wound in the cloud dragon’s hindquarter time and time again.

  The white dragon couldn’t stand it. Releasing the fire dragon, it shot away, screaming its rage and anguish. The red dragon pursued it, glowing with reignited ferocity. The red-gold of its sides shone like flame, brilliant under the full force of the sun. The beats of its great scarlet wings were slower than the frantic flapping of the cloud dragon, but every stroke took it closer, inexorably closing the gap between them. With every beat of its wings, it glowed hotter, its ruby eyes burning with determination. Within moments it was close enough to snap at the cloud dragon’s dulled and soiled tail.

  The fire dragon bit and held and ripped its head sideways, pulling the cloud dragon bodily back through the sky. With a flap of its mighty wings, it embraced the white beast. With its muscular legs, the red dragon forced the cloud dragon’s gold-tinted wings close to its sides and, stretching out, entwined its neck and tail with the trapped creature’s. The glow suffusing the fire dragon grew ever more intense and the white dragon began to burn. Its pale flesh charred, blackness spreading from the lethal brightness of the fire dragon’s touch. Blue blood clotted dark and dried before it had a chance to flow. The membrane of the cloud dragon’s wings split and curled away to leave the fine azure bones exposed before they, too, cracked and broke.

  The cloud dragon screamed in uncomprehending fear and pain, its long, lean head writhing against the brutal bluntness of the fire dragon’s muzzle. The red dragon held on tight, falling with its dying rival, tongue flickering across the cloud dragon’s muzzle. Its eyes were unblinking ruby malevolence lit with points of fire as the cloud dragon’s eyes dulled, their sapphire light extinguished. The two beasts fell, still entangled, on to the next rocky outcrop in the chain of islets. The impact sent knives of shattered stone in all directions and the rock where the dragons had landed vanished in a cloud of vapour laced with fire and lightning.

  Is it gone? Have the wizards finally made good on their promise? Is this an end to it all?

  Kheda sprang to his feet, he couldn’t help it. Risala was at his shoulder, so close he could feel her trembling. He threw an arm around her shoulders and held her close, trying to see what had become of the dragons.

  The fog of magic, dust and mist faded. The cloud dragon was gone. The fire dragon remained. It lay sprawled on the damp rock, its vibrant colours muted. The scales of its back were the colour of clotted blood, its underbelly a dirty orange where wounds oozed dull crimson. Only its eyes were still bright, brilliant ruby lit by points of white-hot fire.

  ‘It’s not dead,’ breathed Kheda, horrified.

  ‘Where are the wizards?’ Risala pulled herself free of his arm and looked around, eyes white-rimmed in her ashen face.

  ‘Let’s get out of here before it recovers enough to fly.’ Kheda ran to the cliff edge and looked down at the Reteul. ‘The mages, they’re on the boat,’ he shouted back over his shoulder. He looked again and saw that the Reteul was rocking dangerously in its niche, no longer buttressed with magic. He winced as a slopping wave drove the vessel against the rocks with a grating noise. ‘Get us down there!’ he yelled urgently to Velindre.

  She looked up at him, pale beneath her tan, tears smeared across her cheeks. ‘No, no magic. We can’t risk it. I’ll throw you a rope.’

  Kheda stood, fuming, as she searched for one. ‘Dev! Show her the locker!’

  The bald wizard was sitting on the deck, head hanging, hands pressed to his temples.

  Risala came up beside Kheda. ‘Dev!’ The bald mage didn’t respond. ‘Here!’ Velindre had found a rope and slung a length awkwardly aloft. It barely reached half the distance between them before it fell back short

  ‘Throw the coil, not the end,’ yelled Kheda, frustrated. Velindre’s second attempt was better aimed and Risala grabbed the rope out of the air.

  Kheda seized the Aldabreshin girl’s arm as she stepped perilously close to the broken edge of the cliff. ‘Let me have that. You go first.’ He took the rope out of her hands and slung it around his waist, setting his feet finnly on the dusty rock. ‘Slap some sense into Dev. We have to kill that beast before it recovers. I’ll cut its throat with my own sword if that’s what it takes.’

  ‘If you can.’ Risala didn’t look at him, concentrating on tying the rope securely around her thighs. Kheda braced himself as she began climbing down the ragged cliff. Several heavy jerks and one startled curse told him when hand—or foothold in the rotten rock betrayed her. Then the slackness in the rope announced her arrival on the Reteul’s deck. He moved to the edge of the cliff and looked down, just to make sure.

  ‘Is there anything you can tie the rope to?’ Risala looked up at him, face concerned.

  Kheda judged the distance to the stubby remnants of the nut-palm trees and shook his head as he tossed the rope down to her. ‘I’ll just have to risk it.’ He knelt to study the split and pitted stone, absently scooping up dust to dry his palms.

  Put everything else out of your mind. Concentrate on the task in hand. Distraction can kill you. Forget dragons and wizards and magical trials. Your world is this cliff and your only business is finding solid hand and footholds in the rock.

  He moved slowly, testing every ledge and crack with toes and fingers. He could see where he was putting his hands but his feet were blind: the angle of the cliff made looking down too hazardous. The crash of the seas reverberated around the hollow, drowning out encouragement and advice from the deck below. Kheda closed his ears to all the voices, focusing his attention on testing each new step, each new handhold. Never lifting more than a single hand or foot from the rock at one time, he forced his body mercilessly against sharp edges chiselled by wind and wave.

  A shout of warning sounded beneath him an instant after a slippery ledge crumbled beneath one foot. Kheda clung to the rock with sweating hands and did his best to drive the toes of his other foot into some inadequate crevice they had found. The beat of his heart in his ears sounded as if it were echoing back from the stone he had his face pressed against. Once he was sure he was secure, he tested the cliff with his free foot. A minuscule ledge resisted some pressure then broke away. He stretched and found a larger foothold but that also fell away to crash on to the Reteul’s deck, startling cries from below. Kheda carefully withdrew his unsupported leg and turned his head as far as he could, his chest against an uncomfortably prominent point of rock. The Reteul’s mast danced before him, ropes taut against the varnished wood. Warily, he tried to look down to judge the distance but found himself committed as he lost his grip. Half-jumping, half-falling, he dropped to his hands and knees on the Reteul’s deck with a bruising thud, falling forward and sideways.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Risala was at his side in an instant.

  He stood up. ‘I’ll survive.’ His feet and the arm he had fallen on ached abominably. ‘We need to get this boat out of here.’ He looked expectantly at Velindre. ‘And where are my swords? Dev, can we finish the beast with steel?’

  The magewoman was weeping silently, tears flowing down her frozen face. We can’t sail out of here with my magic’ Her voice was soft and low but steady enough. ‘The dragon would be on us in an instant.’

  ‘You won’t rid your domain of such magic by sticking a sword in that dragon.’ Dev looked up, voice loud and harsh. ‘I know what it’s been doing with those gems. I could feel it. It’s made itself real. It’s escaped the mage who made it—’

  No mage made that creature,’ Velindre interrupted furiously. ‘That’s a true dragon. It was
never a simulacrum.’

  ‘Your spell could never have beaten it? Then it’s won.’ Kheda spoke the dire realisation aloud. ‘It’s here to hunt and fly wherever it wants and all you can do is draw it down on us.’

  ‘Is there no way you can put an end to it?’ Risala demanded frantically.

  ‘I don’t know,’ shouted Dev furiously. He dragged himself to his feet and Kheda saw that the wizard’s hands and face were seared with shallow burns glistening in the sun. He gestured wildly in the direction of the unseen dragon. ‘Yes, it’s a true dragon and that’s one reason it brought down your pitiful beast, Velle. That dragon is used to fighting and using its magic for its own spells. You’ll have to come up with something a cursed sight more clever for it to stand a chance of coming off best.’ He turned his withering scorn on Kheda. ‘And it’ll be up and flying and burning us to a crisp before you could stick your sword in it, you fool!’

  He winced and licked at a split in his lower lip. ‘All right, Velle, what do you make of this? It’s used the rubies from those caches of gems we fed it to focus elemental fire somewhere off to the south. I can feel that much, now that the beast’s wounded, now that it’s drawing its aura back into itself. That’s how it’s healing itself,’ he warned bitterly. ‘So what do we do now, Velle?’ He raised his blistered hands in helpless fury. Because that’s a true dragon which will soon be back at the height of its powers with enough gems cached to draw on all the elemental fire between here and the central domains. You were saying they were territorial? I’d say this is that creature’s territory now, my lord Chazen Kheda—’ The fire dragon’s chilling bellow drowned out the rest of his words. Its mighty wings ripped through the air and it soared above them, heedless of the insignificant boat in the hidden hollow. It looked magnificent once more, underbelly bright as polished metal, vast against the darkening sky.

  ‘Can you raise a stronger dragon?’ Kheda seized Velindre’s shoulder and shook her violently. ‘Something mighty enough to defeat that creature?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She wiped fresh tears from her eyes, still looking after the rapidly vanishing fire dragon. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘How?’ demanded Dev, scathing.

  ‘From an ocean tempest,’ she retorted.

  ‘If we had one to hand,’ mocked Dev. ‘And if we didn’t all drown while we were about it.’

  ‘Dev.’ Kheda snapped his fingers to get the bald mage’s attention. ‘What is this focusing of magic you’re talking about? Has the beast made something that it relies on, something we can destroy?’ You said killing the dragon would deprive this mage we believed had summoned it of his magic’ Risala was following Kheda’s reasoning intently. ‘Can we deprive the dragon of its magic if we scatter its hoard of gems?’

  ‘If that weakened it, could you summon a dragon that might truly kill it?’ Kheda demanded of Velindre once more.

  ‘If it was weakened and, more importantly, distracted,’ she said slowly. ‘If I had a truly enormous storm to draw on. But those don’t appear to order, and like Dev said, by the time one came down on us, we’d be too busy trying to stay alive to be working magic’

  ‘I can tell you when a tempest is coming.’ Kheda brushed aside her objections. Would working your magic lessen such a storm’s ferocity, if you were warned in good time?’

  ‘Yes.’ Growing interest rose above Velindre’s wretchedness.

  ‘You hope,’ scoffed Dev.

  Kheda silenced him with an upraised hand. ‘You said you felt this focusing of elemental fire, Dev. Can you still feel it? Could you find where the beast has hoarded its gems?’

  Dev stared at him, silent for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said finally.

  ‘Would scattering the hoard bring the dragon down on us, without us having to betray ourselves with your magic?’ Kheda looked from the bald wizard to the magewoman and back again. ‘You could use your magics together to attack it? If I could forecast a storm coming?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Some spark of his usual boldness lit Dev’s red-rimmed eyes as he looked at Velindre. ‘Focusing magic through a single gem, for a single, limited purpose, that’s done seldom enough in Hadrumal. This creature’s using a whole hoard to draw on the elemental fire all around, channelling power ceaselessly to itself.’

  ‘There’s no record of anyone from Trydek down having any notion of how to create such an all-pervasive spell,’ Velindre said with wonder. ‘Do you think any of the element masters would have any idea how it’s doing it? Maybe Azazir—’ She broke off with a shudder.

  ‘Don’t think you’re leaving now to go and debate with your fellow mages,’ interrupted Kheda harshly. ‘I’ve had enough of taking your orders.’ Dev’s hand went to his dagger hilt. ‘And I’m not playing your slave any more!’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ snapped Velindre. ‘What do you want to do, Dev? Paddle the whole length of the Archipelago without using a flicker of magic, just to return to Hadrumal and tell the Council you found a true dragon, that it is somehow focusing unimaginable power through a hoard of gems but you’ve no notion how? That you were too scared to try to find out?’

  ‘You’re calling me scared?’ Dev drew his knife in one swift motion to threaten Velindre.

  Taking him by surprise from his blind side, Risala knocked it out of his hand. Don’t be a fool, Dev!’

  ‘Enough,’ shouted Kheda. ‘Dev, that creature’s too close. It’s making you mad!’

  The four of them staggered as the Reteul rocked violently.

  ‘The first thing we need to do is get safely away from here.’ Risala looked uneasily at the rocky walls enclosing them.

  ‘Easier said than done without Velindre’s magic,’ sneered Dev.

  ‘I don’t claim to be any kind of sailor without it.’ The female wizard looked grim-faced at Kheda. ‘But I can pull on a rope if you show me the right one.’

  ‘Risala, the two of you see to the sail,’ Kheda ordered. ‘Dev, get the stern oars out and let’s move out into the channel. We’ll take it as slowly as we can and you fend off while I steer.’

  Still scowling blackly, Dev looked for a moment as if he was going to protest or refuse. Then he turned to free the long sweeps from their lashing below the rail.

  Kheda moved to see what damage had been done to the rudder by the unyielding rocks.

  Splintered edges but sound enough. Sufficient to get us out of here, at least. And then where to? Not back to any residence, that’s for certain.

  There’s no going back for any of us till we’ve rid Chazen of this dragon or died in the attempt.

  Chapter Twenty

  Do you suppose it’ll still be here when we get back?’ Risala looked up from the anchor she was resolutely digging into the ground.

  Satisfied that the rope he was tying around a sturdy knot tree was secure, Kheda shrugged. ‘That depends on how much of the violence Velindre can draw out of this storm with her magic’ The winds were whipping up spray from the sea to mingle with the rain dampening Kheda’s sturdy brown tunic. Is it an omen that the storm we need has arisen in a mere natter of days? Or just to be expected, given the season and the latitude?

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Dev was up on the Reteul’s deck. The boat was bobbing madly in the narrow tree-choked inlet he had finally grudgingly accepted as an anchorage. He froze in the act of nailing a batten across the hatch to the hold.

  ‘The dragon?’ Kheda looked up at the cloud-covered sky, mouth half-open.

  ‘What?’ The bald wizard spared him a brief glance. No, Velle, I was talking to you. I’m relying on you to draw this storm’s teeth. You keep it from wrecking my boat.’

  The magewoman was standing a little distance away, face turned into the accelerating wind driving white-crested waves to crash all along the muddy shore. The larger billows were forcing their way up the inlet to wedge the Reteul still further into the clinging thicket of knot trees. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said absently.

  ‘Do we have any more ropes?’ Kheda surveyed the ungainly lattic
e tying the boat to the shore. He shook his head. ‘This is madness, Dev. The boat’s still right in the path of the fiercest storm of the season so far.’ Dev stood up on the deck. ‘The shorter ropes will save it from being smashed against the shore by the first winds and when they snap, the longer ones will hold it as it rides the surging seas.’

  ‘What if they don’t?’ Risala demanded. ‘Where will the Reteul be when the storm passes?’

  ‘What will it be?’ Kheda muttered under his breath.

  ‘Kindling?

  Where will any of us be? Isn’t this whole voyage madness? You’ve failed in your suborning of magic to defeat this dragon so far. All these wizards’ theories have been proved wrong. Why are you trusting them now? Do you honestly believe they know what they’re doing this time?

  He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand.

  What else can I do? I will not return to face the people of Chazen with the news that there is no way to kill this dragon. If I do, we might as well all take to our boats and flee to cast ourselves on the dubious mercy of the neighbouring domains.

  I cannot go back. We can only go forward. I can only follow this path.

  ‘We need to get inland before the storm comes any closer,’ he shouted above the rising skirl of the wind. ‘Bring your swords, Dev. There may be hogs or water ox in the forest. They’ll be even more inclined to fight than usual if they’re fleeing the storm.’ He looked at Risala. ‘Keep your eyes open, and stay close to me.

  ‘Always.’ She smiled faintly. ‘At least the storm’s blown away that foul humidity, and the sweat flies.’ Dev jumped ashore and grinned at Kheda as he handed over the warlord’s twin scabbarded blades. ‘If you manage to lose this boat for me, I’ll take the price of a new one out of the dragon’s hoard.’