For the briefest instant, there had been nothing but Gerard. No sight, no sound, no emotion. Just death. But the surge of magic from Gerard’s ring, as it made to carry out his last command, caught hold of him just in time.
Like a mother’s fingers, squeezing her child’s skin between her thumbs to force out a splinter or thorn, his pectoral muscles clenched against the dagger blade. It didn’t leave his body, but its tip slipped back out of his heart. The powerful magic of the ring couldn’t fill his empty body back up with blood, but it could heal the mortal wound, and it did.
The ring’s power held him there, on the brink of death, long enough for his heart to start beating again. Gerard’s soul was clinging to his body with all the strength of his love for Shaella. The surge of magical energy gave him the strength to hook his thumb in the dagger’s hilt, and pull it out of his body. The momentum of his falling arm caused him to roll onto his stomach. He couldn’t think. Every move he made was on instinct, or guided by some other force. The magic couldn’t hold him in life much longer, and his body needed liquid to make more blood. These realities came to him as afterthoughts, fragmented truths, telling him how dire his situation was.
Riding the tiny bit of strength the ring’s magical rush had afforded him, he pulled himself across the empty space he was suspended over to the landing of the stairway that spiraled down into the depths. He found that his hands slipped down through the invisible plain that had supported him.
The first step felt real enough when he touched it. The cold, dark thing that he had felt earlier, was pulling at his will again. It wanted desperately to keep him from going down. Gerard’s will wasn’t his own though, it was a thing of instinct, so the demon’s desperation was wasted. The magic of the ring was guiding Gerard. First one step, then another, he used his hands to pull himself down. Then, his upper body went over, and he went sliding. His blood-soaked front acted like a lubricant, and it was several steps later before he came to a rough, jumbled halt against the curving wall of the pit.
The sound of the wizard’s musical chanting had disappeared, and the cold black thing seemed to have found a way to crawl completely inside of him. It was screaming horribly in protest, and the sound echoed through Gerard’s head. With the last bit of magical strength left in him, he managed to pull one arm out of the shoulder strap of his pack. He wiggled himself a step or two down from it, so that it was at the level of his head. He then jabbed a finger-size hole in the top of the dragon’s egg, and put his mouth to it as if it were his mother’s breast.
He looked upward as he greedily drank in the dragon’s yolk. His bloodless body was craving the nutrients, and he didn’t deny it.
Above him, the world was a black smear, backlit by bright, wavering green light. It was as if he was seeing the world from underneath a frozen lake. He could make out the shape of someone as they stalked around, throwing out erratic gestures, but everything else was a blur. Somehow, he knew that it would be a very long time before he could get himself back into the world above him. As the screams of the icy dark thing in his head clashed with the fiery heat of the dragon’s yoke settling in his guts like lava, he began to wonder if he might be better off dead.
Shokin felt the revival of the sacrifice and began to panic. Pael’s binding held the demon to both the wizard and the dying boy, and now it was being pulled apart. Pael felt it too, but the persistent wizard wouldn’t let the spell break. Shokin screamed out in horror. He was bound to each of these men. He reached into the boy’s mind, found the place that controls human thought, and told him to stop; ordered him to stop, but it was no use. Pael wouldn’t let the spell break. Then, the boy tumbled through the Seal and down the stairs, and Shokin, the mighty spectral demon, was torn in two.
The demon’s horrified yell, blasted through Pael’s concentration, thus breaking the wizard’s spell, but it was too late. The demon’s essence was contained in two separate pieces of dark shadow, each with no form of its own. The part of Shokin that was free of the Seal, was bound to Pael, and the quick-witted wizard was gathering it all in.
Shokin wasn’t just a place in Pael’s mind now, nor was he another spirit in the wizard’s body. He was Pael now, and Pael was him. The demon’s power was Pael’s power, and the binding was holding true.
Shokin was a prisoner in two separate places, bound to Gerard in the world of darkness, and to Pael, in the world of men. The demon raged and screamed, his anguish slowly turning to a desperate kind of madness. How had the sacrifice regained its life? Why hadn’t it gone into the Nethers? The answer was irrelevant, for all that really mattered, was the fact that he was Shokin no more.
Pael had felt the spectral demon being torn apart and had concentrated all his will and power into his binding. He didn’t let himself panic; he had worked far too hard to make this moment possible. He would do his best to salvage as much control over the demon as possible.
When the spell was finally broken, he was rewarded for his diligence. As the emerald fire faded away around him, the surge of spectral power filled him like a lightning bolt. It was awesome and breathtakingly electric, glorious and enlightening. It was like a whole new world – no – a whole new universe of possibilities had suddenly come into being. It couldn’t have happened more perfectly. Now, instead of having a demon to do his bidding for him, he had the demon’s power for himself. He wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened, how the boy had kept himself from dying, but his blood tingled with vast demonic power and he found he didn’t really care.
So long and so badly had Shokin longed for revenge, that Pael felt the demon’s desires coursing through him now. All of that rage and determination would serve Pael’s purpose well. He found he was laughing maniacally, and it fell so good that he didn’t try to stop when he saw his daughter, Shaella crying hopelessly on the floor. He didn’t even stop laughing when the huge red dragon behind her reared back its head and sucked in a great breath of air.
Claret wasn’t really the dragon’s name, but it was the name she had given Shaella to command her by. Her true name was unspeakable in any of the languages of men, elves, or dwarves. It pained her deeply to be collared as she was, but she had to protect her eggs. Nature dictated it. It was instinctual. Now, she found she was glad to be where she was. As the green demon flames around Pael died away, Claret saw the egg the wizard’s tornado blast had left broken on the floor. In her growing rage, the dragon sent out magical feelers for her other eggs.
Shaella had tricked her, she learned, but in doing so, had saved one of her eggs from being destroyed. Through the magical link of the collars she and Shaella wore, the dragon could read the girl’s heart plainly. Shaella had not wanted to hurt the eggs, nor did she have any personal reason for trapping and collaring the dragon. All that Shaella had done, had been done to please her father, or to protect her lover.
Claret could tell that the only egg left unharmed was the one that Shaella had captured. She also knew that when the girl was done with her, that she would give her the egg back. Therefore, protecting the girl’s interests became important to her. The hysterical wizard, rubbing salt into the girl’s wounds, by laughing at her sorrow, was the one responsible for destroying two of her un-hatched babies. Thus, when Shaella looked up at her father and wished him dead, Claret gladly warned Shaella out of the way, and prepared to roast him in his tracks.
Shaella wiped the snot from her nose, and looked at the vile old man she had been trying so hard to impress all her life; her so-called father. The man had spent her entire life raising a kingdom prince instead of raising her, his own flesh and blood. She had asked him why he was always away when she was a little girl. “It is all for you,” he would tell her, and she would believe him.
She had desperately wanted her father to love her. He promised her a kingdom, but that’s not what she really wanted. She had wanted him to teach her as he had Cole and Flick, and spend time with her, but it had never happened. Her mother, who had been a Dakaneese Marsh Witch, had cursed h
im with every breath she had ever taken, even her last one. Now, Shaella understood why. He was so heartless, that she doubted him even human anymore.
She bent down, picked up the gnarled old staff he had left lying there, and then spat at his raving laughter. Then, she wasted no time getting clear so that Claret could avenge her un-hatched babies.
The blast of fire that spewed forth from the dragon’s maw was long, and white-hot at its core. Pael was completely consumed in its path, but even through the ear-splitting roar that accompanied the huge gout of flame, his laughter never ceased.
The rock at his feet began to glow red, like coals in a fire pit, yet the laughter carried on. When the blast finally subsided, Pael was still there unharmed. He glanced at his daughter’s giant eyes then, and the mirth and joy he was feeling, evaporated like a single raindrop in a hot skillet. His brows narrowed, and his lips pulled back in an angry snarl.
What Shaella saw before her wasn’t her father anymore, but something else altogether, something terrifyingly powerful, and out of control.
Pael raised his right arm, and choked the air exactly like he had done in King Glendar’s pavilion tent, but this time, when he thrust his grasp back, it was Claret’s huge horned head that felt his grip. The great plated head slammed into the back of the cavern, causing huge pieces of stone to come crashing down on the floor.
Smoke curled up from behind Pael, where all of Gerard’s blood was sizzling like grease on the surface of the red-hot Seal. Claret started to scrabble for purchase with her sharp fore-claws, but a squeezing shake of Pael’s grip, made her think better of it. It was all she could do to get air back into her emptied lungs.
Somewhere, close to the dragon, the deckhand made a sound that was a miserable, pleading howl. Pael flicked at the air with his free hand, and a huge chunk of the cavern ceiling broke free and fell. The sailor’s whine ended in a sickening crunch.
Shaella swallowed hard. Through the link of her collar, she could feel the dragon’s growing fear. After seeing Claret so easily destroy a hundred or more of her Zard soldiers, she could only imagine the power this thing in her father’s body now commanded. She hated him. He could have waited until the dragon had been collared, like he said he would. He could have used the deckhand for a sacrifice. His greedy lack of patience had caused Gerard’s death, nothing more, nothing less. None of this had been for her. She saw it plainly now. It had all been for him; for him to gain more power.
“Let her go!” Shaella yelled at him.
She wanted to draw her sword and charge, but she knew that it would be useless. He would easily find a way to stop her. Besides, she had left her blade lying on the cavern floor where she had collapsed earlier. It didn’t matter to her now. The sword had been a gift from Pael. and she found that she no longer wanted it.
As if he could read her mind, Pael spoke.
“Ungrateful bitch!”
His voice was as hard and cold as his expression. “I would crush your life away if you weren’t my daughter! Love is a fleeting thing, little girl. You’re too good for a mere egg thief. I saved you from being a slave to your own emotions. You have Valldian blood in your veins, the blood of the ancients, and you’d do well to never forget it. I spared you a lifetime of heartache!”
Spittle flew from his lips, and his veins bulged, like blue and green earth worms, under the slick, white skin of his forehead and neck.
“I’ve left a kingdom virtually unguarded for your taking, and I showed you how to take it and hold it. I gave you the dragon collar, and the means to trap the feeble beast, and all you can manage, is to try and use it to burn me to ashes!”
A long, ropey strand of saliva dangled from his chin, but he was oblivious to it. “How dare you scoff at all that I have done for you!”
Claret writhed bodily in his grasp, her huge body knocking loose pieces of the walls and shaking the whole cavern as she did so.
Pael knew that she was about to choke to death. He gave her a rough final squeeze, and with eyes that glared deadly lightning into her, he let her go. Wisely, she recoiled into a cowering position, and gulped precious air back into her lungs.
Shaella found that she felt more than a little ashamed. Pael was right, and she knew it. Still, she hated him no less. She glared back at him coldly, as she strode over, and took up her sword. As she stood there fuming, with the staff of malice in one hand, and softly glowing blade in the other, she thought she saw in his eyes the thing she had sought for her entire life. For the first time, she could remember, she saw his respect there.
“Use your rage and hatred, for what I have done is to help you take Westland for your own.”
The look in his eyes faded into something colder than ice and darker than pitch, and his voice grew distant. She wasn’t sure then if it was still her father who was speaking to her.
“I have my own agenda to tend to. You owe me. Do not forget it again!”
What Pael had become she couldn’t say, but whatever he was now, he vanished from before her with a static pop of emerald sparks.
Looking beyond where he had stood, she saw the dark stain of Gerard’s life blood smoldering on the floor. It was all she could do to bite back her grief, and keep from breaking into tears again. The knife scar that ran down her cheek tricked her into thinking a tear had escaped her new found force of will. As she went to brush it away, she couldn’t help but think that she had lost far more than just a lover this day. She had lost her father as well.
Chapter 31
Mikahl shivered inside the thick Shagmar fur coat he was wearing. It was still early summer, but in the Giant Mountains, it was snowing. Not actually new snowfall, Hyden had explained to the castle born Westlander, but windblown snow, left over from the previous winter. Mikahl didn’t care how it got there; to him it was snowing. The stuff was swirling about them, getting down his collar, and whipping into every little tiny opening of his warm wear.
And the blasted wind! The wind was driving him crazy. Even up in Coldfrost, where the sea freezes solid for most of the year, it hadn’t been this cold. The numerous valleys they had already traversed hadn’t been so bad, almost spring like. The ridge they were passing over at the moment, however, was caked in ice, and so bitter and frigid, so slick and narrow, that Mikahl thought that he might lose his digits to the bite, if he didn’t tumble off the side of the mountain first.
He had been forced to lead his horse, Windfoot, the last few days. How the others walked up and down the treacherous slopes was beyond him. His legs were sore, he was tired, and confused, but as he shivered again, he decided that the worst thing about all of it was that he was so blasted cold.
Loudin had been leading the two horses that carried his precious bark lizard skin. In the valleys, he had ridden the lead horse awkward style, just like they had back in the Reyhall Forest, but it was far too treacherous on this narrow pass for either of them to ride. More than once, the lizard skin had almost caused disaster. They had to untie the roll so that the horses could make a few tight turns, once around a washout, and again where the pass turned, hugging the mountain. The skin had grown stiff in the cold, and wouldn’t give at all. It was just like hauling a log.
Once, the front horse was startled by a chunk of falling ice. It tried to bolt forward, nearly yanking the rear horse off its hooves. This in turn, yanked the front horse backwards. Both horses, the bark lizard skin, along with Loudin as he grabbed after his prize, almost went over the edge.
After that, the bulky skin came off of the horses at even the slightest sign of trouble. Mikahl was certain that Loudin expected a small fortune for the skin. Only great wealth, or the prospect of it, would give a man like Loudin cause to make such a miserable and treacherous journey as this one was turning out to be.
The other two, Mikahl found, often left him shaking his head in wonder. They had been on foot the entire way, and had jogged for days alongside the horses in the lower passes and valleys. Not once had they slowed the group. Not once had they comp
lained or asked for rest. Even though the elf’s wounded eye was obviously troubling him, he never voiced his discomfort to his companions. And Hyden Hawk, to Mikahl’s great surprise and respect, hadn’t even been winded after jogging uphill most of a day. Neither of them seemed affected by the sharp bite of the wind, or the slick icy terrain.
Hyden and Vaegon took turns leading the group. The elf led more often than not. When the wild looking, bone-thin creature wasn’t out front, he seemed troubled. It was more than just the loss of the eye, or getting used to the leather patch he now wore over the ugly hole. The elf seemed to be hurting on a deeper level.
Mikahl wasn’t exactly sure what Vaegon’s problem was, until one night when the golden haired elf ceremoniously gave Hyden his longbow at the campfire. He saw the problem a little more clearly then. Vaegon had lost his aiming eye, probably the worst injury an archer could sustain.
“Hyden Hawk,” Vaegon always called Hyden ‘Hyden Hawk,’ whether he was speaking to him or about him.
Hyden took the bow with a silent nod of understanding, and had since treated it with nothing less than reverence. This obviously pleased the elf, but not enough to shatter his bouts of depression.
Hyden Hawk, it seemed to Mikahl, was part animal, part wizard. He could see through the eyes of his hawkling friend, Talon, and he could hunt up a meal in the middle of an icy rain storm, as if it were a clear spring day. He spoke with his bird, as if it were just another traveler among them. He obviously had a lot on his mind, but he made for excellent company at the fire. He loved to laugh, and he loved to hear a tale, almost as much as Loudin loved to tell them.
Loudin, Mikahl learned, was more than just a trapper and hunter. He had once been a mariner of sorts, and he often spent the evening stretching a story about the strange and distant lands he had visited in his adventures. He had been to all of the seven kingdoms, including the Isle of Salazar. He had even been across the Great Western Sea to the land of Harthgar. He told them of the strange customs the people of the outer islands had, and of the great shipbuilding yards on the big island of Salazar. He told them of the slave-fighting pits in Dakahn, of the exotic women one could purchase there. He even told them all about the Seaward custom of skin marking. He hinted at the vast and powerful magics that the Witch Queen of Highwander had at her disposal, and the strange little men called dwarves, that were rumored to stay in the city of Xwarda at her magnificent palace.
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