Dragon Quest

by Heather Walker

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Thanks For Reading

  DRAGON QUEST

  PHOENIX THRONE BOOK TWO

  HEATHER WALKER

  Copyright © 2018 Heather Walker

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Chapter 1

  Elle Watson ran for her life through the forest. She hurdled fallen tree trunks, slashed through brambles, and snapped off branches in her headlong flight toward…nothing. Something was coming after her. She didn’t know what it was, but she felt it behind her. It stretched out its clawed talons to grab and tear and kill.

  She would give anything for her sidearm right now. She usually wore it in a concealed holster under her business suit jacket, but she took it off and put it in her handbag when she sat down on the carpet at Hazel Green’s house. She stashed her handbag in the corner of the living room so she would be more comfortable. She didn’t think she needed her sidearm for Hazel’s magic séance, or whatever it was.

  One blinding flash later, and Elle hit the ground running with nothing to defend herself but her bare hands. If she had her sidearm, she could stop running and confront whatever it was following her. She didn’t dare turn around emptyhanded. She bolted this way and that, but wherever she turned, that thing behind her seemed to follow.

  Malicious eyes glared out at her from every shadow. Cruel, mocking voices chittered and chuckled somewhere out of sight. They knew better. It was only a matter of time before they caught up with her, and then what would she do?

  Somewhere in the distance, she saw an open expanse of clear sky—not blue, but sort of dusky grey. Her heart leapt at the chance to get out of this dank, dark forest. She headed for it, broke through the last screen of foliage, and crested a rise. From the top, she looked out over rolling fields. A river curled between the hills below her, and a black fringe of woods bordered the fields beyond.

  She put on speed. The landscape called to her. It breathed safety. How she knew, she couldn’t tell. She only understood in the depths of her soul she would be safe over there. She barreled down the slope. Her eye skipped over the river and spotted a shallow gravel ford a few dozen paces down the bank. She headed for it.

  Her bootheels splashed into an inch of water. The foam splashed around her ankles, but she charged across. Thank heaven she didn’t take her boots off when she sat down on Hazel’s floor, or she would have been running through that forest in her socks.

  She took one springing leap onto the other bank and left the forest and all its hideous dangers behind. She didn’t stop running until she gained the upper flats of the fields beyond the hills. She staggered and dropped from sheer exhaustion.

  Her breath strained through her parched throat, and her chest ached. She made a mental note to add more cardio to her workout regime. She prided herself on being prepared for anything, but she never expected to be running for her life through this hostile country.

  She knelt on her hands and knees and fought to catch her breath. Her straight brown hair hung around her face, and the ends of her bob brushed her cheeks when she wheezed. When she finally got her breathing under control, she pushed herself upright and brushed off her suit.

  This pants suit wasn’t the greatest outfit for her circumstances, either, but she just had to make the best of it. Now that she stood upright without the forest hemming her in, she took a good look around her for the first time.

  The clear daylight shone over the field. She didn’t realize before how cold it was until she got out into the open. She didn’t have time to think about that running through the forest.

  She glanced back from the hilltop. Dense woods crowded to the river’s edge where she just crossed to safety. Who knew what dangers lurked in those woods? She wouldn’t go back there.

  Before her lay inviting fields with nodding wildflowers and rustling grasses all around her legs. She set off heading nowhere. She couldn’t see a house or any sign of human activity. No roads or fences crossed the fields. No livestock browsed or grazed on this lush, rich grass. That was strange.

  She couldn’t stay where she was and she couldn’t go back, so she just kept going. She headed for the woods on the far side, but they didn’t give her the same sense of foreboding as the forest behind her. Maybe she panicked and that’s why she thought they were dangerous.

  She arrived at the first trees and stopped. She surveyed the field behind her, but still didn’t see anything. Where was she? Where was everybody?

  Now that she no longer ran for her life, she thought her circumstances over. She saw herself sitting on Hazel’s carpet. She watched Hazel arrange the objects for her spell. Hazel wanted to send herself and her four friends to King Arthur’s court at Camelot. Elle didn’t even bother to find out why. Hazel always came up with these crazy ideas. Elle never questioned much. If Hazel wanted to dabble in magic, who was Elle to stop her?

  Elle didn’t pay much attention to the incantation Hazel told them all to say, either. She replayed the whole scene in her mind. Carmen Hendricks, the hard-nosed detective, showed her distaste for the whole experiment. Elle had to order her to join the circle instead of disrespecting Hazel by hanging back. Sadie Cole, the doctor, took an active interest in every detail of every situation, no matter how bizarre. Grace Spencer worshiped Hazel and wanted to be just like her, if only Grace could muster the courage to do it.

  Then there was Hazel herself. Hazel was always a misfit, even back in their college days when the five women met at the dorm. Hazel adopted every trend and fad she came across in her endless search for something to make sense of the world. She would probably never succeed.

  She would definitely not succeed now. That silly spell must have worked. Elle must be in King Arthur’s time now, so where were the others? If Hazel transported Elle here, she must have transported all five of them to the same spot.

  So where were the knights and castles and even the lowly landsmen? There ought to be someone around, at least. She surveyed the sky, but she couldn’t even figure out what time of day it was. A thick mat of shining white covered the sky, but Elle couldn’t exactly call it cloud. The light streamed through this mat to illuminate the world in a hazy dreamlike mist.

  A few inviting trails cut into the forest in front of her. Someone must have made th
em, so Elle followed them. They must lead somewhere. She didn’t care where she went, but she had to get somewhere. She had to find shelter before night, whenever that came.

  She entered the wood at an easy walk. She took her time and inspected everything around her. She studied the path for tracks, but she couldn’t see a thing. Not one sign of animal or bird life disturbed the stillness. What was this place?

  She squatted down next to the path and took hold of a large stone embedded in the dirt. She pried it out of the ground. Not a single woodlouse, creepy-crawly, or worm squirmed underneath it against the black soil. She stared down at the flat, damp dirt. Something strange was definitely going on. She knew that for certain now.

  She put the rock back and walked on, but more slowly than before. She chose each step with care and studied the silent forest all around her. She still didn’t get any sense of danger from this place, although it did make her skin prickle, now that she knew it wasn’t a normal forest.

  Maybe all those stories about King Arthur’s time told the truth about magic and witches and fairies and whatever else. Maybe someone like Merlin really did exist and Elle stumbled into his domain. Maybe the animals and birds and bugs wouldn’t live in the same forest with him for fear he would enchant them. Maybe he did enchant them so their noises wouldn’t wake him up in the morning.

  She still didn’t turn back. Whatever lived in this forest and made this path, she had to find it. She would get hungry and cold pretty soon. Besides, she never turned her back on any danger before and she wouldn’t start now.

  She strolled through the trees in no particular hurry. She had four important client meetings tomorrow morning, but until she found a way to get herself sent back to her own time and place, she didn’t have to worry about that.

  Hazel cast that spell in the evening after dark, and here it was still daytime. Her meetings could be long over. They could never have happened yet. King Arthur’s court happened centuries before Elle’s financial company got off the drawing board.

  The path undulated more just here. It dropped into hollows and curved over hummocks. It crossed streams devoid of fish. No tracks of deer or rabbit or raccoon marked the soil. A terrible thought crossed Elle’s mind. She wasn’t in King Arthur’s Camelot. Camelot had animals and people and life. This was somewhere else.

  She stopped in her tracks. If she wasn’t in Camelot, where exactly was she? If that spell worked and sent her somewhere, then magic must really work. Hazel couldn’t make a magic spell if she tried, but something sure happened in that living room.

  Elle looked over her surroundings with very different eyes. She was in some magic realm. What other magic powers would she discover here?

  Well, either way, she wasn’t confronting any magic powers here. There was nothing here to bother her, nothing at all. She started walking again. The path wound this way and that. It never ended or changed much. More forest, more trees, more streams, more leaves and bushes surrounded her everywhere.

  Elle sighed. She would almost be glad to see some kind of danger, just to break up the monotony. Just when she seriously considered going back the way she came, the path broke out in a little glade fringed with trees. A grassy lawn sponged under Elle’s bootheels.

  Clear white columns of something resembling a fungus stood all over the grass. Their translucent fabric let the daylight stream through. Elle wound her way between them and stared in awestruck shock at the sight. Each pillar held a person suspended in clear, solid fibers.

  A woman stared out at the world with her mouth frozen in the middle of a startled cry. Her hand pressed against the fibers, but she couldn’t escape. Another column held a grey-haired man wearing rustic, country clothes. He held a pitchfork in one hand, and the same surprised expression on his face.

  The fibrous cylinders all contained people in various aspects of shock and surprise. One of them even held a cow. The animal blinked out at the world as if she just picked up her head from munching the grass.

  Elle walked from one column to the next. She studied each person in turn. What could capture these people in suspended animation like this? She inspected the white fibers. Were they some kind of fungus that leapt up out of the ground and caught their prey in a net? The captives didn’t show any signs of decomposition. They looked fresh and very much alive.

  She stopped in front of a tall young man with shoulder-length chestnut brown hair. Elle couldn’t see his eyes because he threw back his head in an attitude of mortal agony. He raised his hands like he was trying to defend himself from something.

  He wore a dark green kilt coming down to his knees. A leather pouch hung by a belt around his hips to cover his crotch. He wore a long, curved saber hanging in a scabbard from his wide leather belt around his waist. A rough scraggle of beard darkened his jaws like he hadn’t shaved in a while.

  A simple linen shirt covered his torso with another length of plaid crossed over his chest, and Elle measured the stout, chiseled muscle underneath it. She saw enough masculine muscle in her weight-lifting gym back home to understand this man.

  His height hid his bulk, but every inch of him showed the same cut of strength and power. Who was he? How did he wind up in this…this prison? Without thinking about it, Elle put out her hand to touch the white fibers holding him.

  The fabric scratched her fingers. It felt like rough wool, but the moment she touched it, it started to disintegrate. She yanked her hand back, but a chain reaction spread from the spot where she laid her hand. The fibers peeled back and evaporated in steam. Before she could blink, the whole column vaporized, and the young man collapsed in a heap at her feet.

  Chapter 2

  Robbie Cameron groaned and doubled up in pain. He hugged his arms over his stomach and rolled over onto his knees. He crouched on the ground and retched into the grass. Excruciating pain wracked his body all over. Every move cost him stabbing agony in every limb and fiber.

  He huddled in a ball on the grass and squinched his eyes shut against the light. As long as he kept still, it didn’t hurt so much. He waited a moment until things settled down enough to catch his breath.

  His long hair concealed his face and shaded his eyes from the light. He kept his eyes closed, but in the stillness of his agony, he sensed something moving near him. A soft, female voice touched his ear. “Who are you?”

  He pried one eyelid open and spotted a pair of black leather boots on the ground in front of him. He rallied his courage to glance up, but pain stabbed his insides worse than ever. He huddled down until the wave passed.

  That one glance told him all he needed to know. A straight, strong woman with plain brown hair stood in front of him. She wore black trousers, black boots, and a black jacket over a pristine white shirt. He couldn’t make out much of her body under those clothes, but one glance told him she hid a powerful body under there. Whoever she was, she didn’t have a scrap of extra on her. She was solid muscle.

  Robbie closed his eyes again. He didn’t need to see her to understand who and what she was. He already saw Carmen Hendricks, that strange woman who appeared out of nowhere wearing strange clothes like this woman’s. Carmen had short hair. At least this one had some hair on her head. Anybody could see she was a woman—unlike Carmen, who looked like a boy with breasts.

  Robbie thought fast. How did he get here? He was trekking across the Highlands with his brothers and their friends on a path to an enchanted castle. They had to break the curse plaguing their family, and they lost forty men fighting wraiths and God knew what else.

  The Fire Trilogy, that mysterious book his brother Angus got from the enchanted ghost Queen, said Angus would become King. He would sit on the Phoenix Throne and free the ghost people from their invisible prison.

  Once inside the castle, the party found a door that opened into a field. They crossed it to a ring of standing stones, but before they could do anything, an earthquake shook the ring into a sinkhole. Robbie saved Angus from falling to his death in the fiery inferno underground
, but the instant he saved his brother, Robbie fell into the same hole.

  The incident snapped into Robbie’s mind. He hung by Angus’s wrists and begged his brother not to let go. Angus and Carmen fought hard to save him, but they couldn’t pull him up. He fell….

  One eye popped open. He fell, and he wound up here. He studied the individual blades of grass around the woman’s boots. Where was he, and how did he get here?

  The fire in that sinkhole had burned his legs and blasted up his kilt. Something terrible then extended a scorching tendril and seized him by the ankle. It pulled him out of Angus’s grasp and dragged him to his death. He remembered everything now.

  Except he didn’t die. He woke up here at this woman’s feet. How did that happen? He dared to raise his head. That’s when he saw the others. Two dozen white forms dotted the glade all around him. People in different aspects of surprise and fear stood behind the clear, solid mats of fibers.

  He must have been one of them. He must have gotten trapped in one of those pillars of…whatever it was. Somehow, he got transported here from the fire demon’s lair under the standing stones.

  He tried to sit up, and a lightning fork of pain shot through him. He pitched forward on his hands and knees. He howled through gritted teeth, and a dribble of saliva ran down his lip to disappear in the grass.

  The woman spoke up again. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

  He knew that voice. She talked the same way Carmen did, but with a higher, lilting pitch. He spat bile onto the ground. “Me name’s Rob. Robbie Cameron the Younger, from Ballachulish, in the west country.”

  She walked away to one of the other columns. “How did you get into this?”

  “How should I ken?” he grumbled. “I was…weel, ye wouldnae believe me if I told ye.”

  She turned around and regarded him from across the glade. “I’m Elle. Elle Watson.”

  He pushed himself back on his knees. He had to get on his feet and face this, even if it hurt. He had to figure out how to get back to his brothers. “I ken who ye are.”