Tales From Thac

by F P Spirit et al.

  Gully clutched the sword closer and looked at her very strangely.

  “Inazuma, let him go!”

  “I am not holding him.” There was a puzzled tone to the sword’s voice. Then forcefully, Inazuma said, “Boy! Place me on the ground, NOW!”

  Slowly, with a jerking action, almost like one of old man Heriponzo’s marionettes, Gully placed the sword on the ground. He stared at it for a minute like he wanted to pick it back up.

  “Gully, Uncle Vic could die!” Merry felt hysteria creeping into her voice. “Please, Gully…” She gave another heave and moved the limp form of her uncle several inches closer to the pool.

  When she looked up, Gully had Uncle Vic’s feet. He looked at her with that sheepish grin he always got when caught with his hands in one of Mum’s pies.

  “Sorry Merry, I was… distracted,” he said softly. “Please don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying!” she snapped at him, wiping something from her cheek. “Now on three—one, two, three!”

  Between the two of them, they partly carried and partly dragged their unconscious uncle to the edge of the pool.

  “Keep his feet elevated while I clean the remains of this dragon spit off him.” Merry was trying to remember what the Lady Gracelynn had said in her healing class. Mum had been in that one, along with a lot of the women from the village; the Lady called it ‘first aid,’ and said it was very important if someone was hurt badly.

  “Shouldn’t you raise his head instead?” Gully asked.

  “No, that’s not what you do for someone in shock.”

  “I didn’t shock him, I swear!”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Merry said, a little harsher than she intended.

  She turned and asked, “Inazuma, is there anything you can do?”

  The sword's voice seemed truly sad when it responded. “I’m afraid I know nothing of healing. My function and fate have always been to do the opposite. But I believe you are wise and correct in your actions.”

  Merry undid the buckle on Uncle Vic’s satchel strap, then she began tearing strips from his shirt, most of which was ruined anyway. She soaked the fabric in the pool water and cleaned his wounds as best she could.

  “Check his bag,” she instructed Gully. “See if there's anything to keep him warm.”

  “Yeah, there’s a cloak rolled up in here. And flint, tinderbox, three sacks, two tin flasks in a box, a bunch of travel cakes… great, I was getting hungry… oh, and a compass!”

  While Gully was inventorying the satchel, Merry continued working on gently cleaning around the burns. As she was wiping his face, Uncle Vic began to stir.

  He groaned slightly and opened his eyes.

  “I always knew angels were pretty,” Uncle Vic’s whisper was raw, but he still had that familiar, infuriating, lopsided grin. She wanted to hug him, but thought better of it and only punched his good shoulder lightly.

  “What are you doing here?” Merry asked.

  “Oh, the usual,” he quipped weakly, “fighting dragons.” Then Uncle Vic’s grin turned to a grimace of pain as he gasped, “Argh, I feel mostly dead.”

  “You are. Now lie still.”

  “I am sorry, but we cannot stay here,” Inazuma said. “There are more dragons, and they will come looking for this one eventually. They could be here at any moment.”

  “You hear that too, right?” Uncle Vic was looking at the statue.

  “It’s the sword,” Merry said tiredly, “and he’s right. Other, bigger, worse dragons…” She shuddered slightly, remembering that horrible crimson beast.

  “Huh? Oh, of course, the sword…” Uncle Vic said dubiously.

  He shifted his head slightly and looked querulously at the blade on the ground a few feet away. Inazuma wasn’t even sparking at the moment. Then Uncle Vic tried to sit up but fell back with a muffled cry.

  “Oh shite, that’s bad!” Merry gasped, looking at the raw meat of Uncle Vic’s side that began hissing and smoking again after he moved. Despite her best efforts, the draconic acid was still eating into him, and now an alarming rasp had crept into his breathing.

  “Flask… in… my bag,” he gasped with his eyes closed.

  Merry felt moisture on her face again as she dug into his satchel. Uncle Vic would most likely die here, and there was nothing she could do other than get him a drink to help ease the pain.

  “Here.”

  She very carefully tilted his head while pulling out the cork with her teeth, and dribbled some of the drink down his throat.

  “All… it,” Uncle Vic faintly whispered between chokes as he swallowed.

  Very gently, Merry helped him drink the rest of the flask. Only a few stray drops ended up down his chin. It was a very strange liquor—if that’s what it was—with a thickness like syrup and a light blue color. Sniffing the now-empty bottle, the scent was like spring lilacs instead of alcohol. As Uncle Vic’s breathing steadied, and his face unknotted, Merry realized it was magic.

  In moments, his eyes opened, and Merry helped him struggle into a sitting position.

  “One of Old Meg’s healing potions!” Merry exclaimed, examining the symbol carved on both the flask and stopper, “she asks a terrible price for these!”

  Years of servitude, an unborn child, or a piece of your soul were not uncommon in stories of dealings with the ancient Witch of Gelcliff.

  “That’s just to scare off the village simpletons from bothering her,” Uncle Vic replied, “she likes actual gold as much as any old woman.”

  “You’re drinking the second one,” Merry declared. She had never seen a gold piece, but she had never seen a wound as bad as that one before, either.

  “No way! The cost of one of those is almost as painful as dragon spit,” Uncle Vic exclaimed. Then with a twinge of pain, he added another, whispered, “almost.”

  “Fine,” Merry said firmly. “If you’re strong enough to keep me from pouring it down your throat, then you don’t need it.”

  She emphasized her point with a poke to his raw side, which made him grit his teeth and gasp, “Alright!”

  Merry kept her glare on him as he grudgingly took the second small flask and downed its contents.

  “You’re almost as bad as your mother,” Uncle Vic grumbled, but his grin had returned, and his side looked noticeably better.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Merry said, a relieved smile of her own finally breaking through. “Someone has to keep both of you numbskull boys in line.”

  She gestured toward Gully, who had the crumbs of a travel cake on his face.

  “I knew he’d be fine,” Gully stated with confidence.

  He just shrugged in response to her raised-eyebrow look, then reached beside him for something.

  “Hey, check this out!” Gully held up a huge green gem in front of his face; it was almost as big as his head, and it took both his hands to hold it. “We’re rich!”

  Merry just stared, astonished.

  Uncle Vic sighed. “Sorry, Gully, we can’t keep that.”

  The chamber seemed to sway slightly as Perovich stood up. He waved Merry away, but she grabbed his good arm and steadied him anyway. It was a good thing since the floor seemed less firm at the moment than the deck of a sloop in a gale.

  He carefully turned and faced the statue of Alaric. The acid had run down the front, leaving small marks that seemed to be fading as he watched.

  “I’m a man of my word,” he said quietly.

  Merry looked askance, but he just flashed his best grin at her. “It’ll be alright, have faith.”

  “Uncle Vic, are you sure you didn’t hit your head when that dragon tossed you?” she asked dubiously.

  A splash brought them both about in alarm; Perovich immediately regretted the sudden movement as pain shot through his side. There were only faint, dark ripples in the pool near where Gully had just been standing a moment before.

  Cold fear gripped their hearts as they both stood in shock for a few quietly strained mom
ents before Gully’s grinning head popped back out of the water. He was triumphantly holding the second emerald eye.

  “I knew you threw two!” he crowed. Then he set the second giant green gem on the edge of the pool next to the first, and nimbly pulled himself out of the water.

  “Gully! Don’t do that!” Merry scolded.

  “What?” Gully asked, sincerely perplexed.

  The skinny lad stood there in the lightning-spawned illumination beneath the statue, the flickering shadow of the upraised heavenly bolt falling directly on him. Perovich almost didn’t recognize his nephew for a moment again. It must be weakness from the wounds, he thought. He had to blink twice to bring the boy back into focus.

  It was just little Gully, but he could see indomitable spirit and a love of adventure reflected in Gully’s blue-gray eyes. He remembered that feeling; he was only a few years older than Gully was now when he stowed away aboard a southbound freighter to join the Penwick navy.

  As Gully stepped forward, Perovich also noticed a large, puckered scar running from the boy’s right shoulder halfway across his chest. It looked nasty, but several weeks healed, and Perovich knew the lad didn’t have that injury only a few hours ago. He had seen a ship’s priests call upon spirit energy to heal wounds like that in a matter of seconds.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Dragon,” Gully said, tracing the scar with a grin. “Not a little one like your black, but a great big fiery red one!” He stretched out the words and spread his arms wide, emphasizing the size.

  Ah, the boy has the knack, Perovich thought. The only thing sailors liked better than showing off their scars was exaggerating the size of their encounters.

  “I suppose that one got away?” he refrained from chuckling; it would hurt his wounded side too much.

  “Dunno, I suppose it’s still out there…” Gully looked up at the domed ceiling at this end of the chamber as if he could see through it. His voice had gotten quieter at the thought.

  The morning sun beamed down on the land in waves of glorious heat that lesser creatures may have found discomforting. Indeed, Theria found herself the sole creature on the sparkling white sands of the beach. She suspected the others were just too cowardly to stay near the ocean.

  With the oppressive miasma of the dragon shard just a flickering whisper of its former power, Theria felt a great weight lifted from her spirit. And the burning fires of anticipation lightened the normal aggravation caused by incompetent companions—or at least they were far enough away to be tolerable.

  A distinct fresh mound of earth in the hill just northwest of the cove marked the spot where Berikarth had burrowed. He claimed to heal faster underground, but Theria suspected the earth-dragon just wanted to escape the blazing sun.

  Just beyond the hill, if she stretched to her full height, Theria could see the odd shape of the ice dome that Irovnia had built. The frost-dragon had dammed a small stream with ice and used the water to construct an elaborate dome structure with a small core, that—Theria was sure—was hellishly-cold.

  The swamp dragon, Yiglelot, hid in a pool of stagnant water in the ruined old temple just inland that he was happily fouling even more. Most of the temple roof was intact, and the interior was shadowed and cool, a fit place for a lesser dragon of Yiglelot's sort. Theria was sorely tempted to set the vine-covered walls and most of the forest beyond ablaze, just to discomfort the black-scaled coward who had been so useless in the morning encounter.

  But the Dragon Master had forbade drawing excess attention from the locals, and for some reason had specifically mentioned her tendency to burn large swathes of countryside. Theria would obey for now; she was not ready to incinerate that bridge yet.

  So instead of being able to properly relax in a roaring conflagration, she was stuck just soaking up as much heat as she could on this sandy strip. But even that didn’t bother her too much at the moment.

  So, she stood and stretched her wings lazily up and down the beach, which was too narrow to fit her full wingspan width-wise. Earlier, she had flown low, but not too low, out over the deep water near the cove. Then she had sat upon the rock at the end of the cove, hoping to tempt the bronzes back, or perhaps to prove to herself she could conquer at least that small part of the water element. But the rock was too small for comfort, with annoyingly cool water all around, and no opponents came from the sea to challenge her.

  By mid-morning, she had taken to sifting through the wreckage and flotsam from the fishing boat that had gathered in an undulating mass, tide-driven against the south breakwater.

  Theria found assorted junk among the debris—pieces of boat, a left sandal, a large floppy straw hat, various net-floats ridiculously carved to look like fish, and a large basket floating in the middle of it. She had a brief image of an old story about a human hero set upon the ocean in a basket as a child because of godly jealousy, who later grows up to be a great dragon slayer.

  Of course, there wasn’t any such tasty morsel as a human baby in this basket. Her nose told her that long before she hooked one side open with as dainty a claw movement as she could manage. The basket was still nearly rent in half. She carefully set it between two rocks on the dry end of the breakwater. Theria knew what she had to do to examine it properly, and she would save that for later.

  With a rush of air and swirling sand, she took to the sky and circled the area. Some of the debris had made it out of the cove, pulled south by the current to wash on the rocky beaches nearby. She had a sudden thought and scanned the ocean down the coastline.

  The ice over the cove’s center hole was significantly smaller, and the icy boulder from the cove’s mouth was gone. Either it had totally melted or floated away. She had no experience with ice, how long it took to melt, or how or why stupid ice dragons made the horrible cold stuff. She could ask Irovnia, but a conversation with her would likely result in nothing more than a headache.

  As she flew back to the cove, Theria noticed how out of place it seemed. From the air, it was pretty clear when one looked. The cove was the only spot of pure white sand; the rest of the rock-strewn beaches in the area were darker and tan-colored. The boulders of the two near-perfect semicircular breakwaters were a light gray, and although rough-hewn, the blocks were all of a square or rectangular shape. The native rocks on the rest of the beaches were much darker, almost black in shade.

  She had known it was man-made, but why haul in the special materials for an ocean breakwater? The overgrown buildings near the cove appeared to be an ancient temple complex. Theria wondered if there might be more than meets the eye underground, or even underwater. Like all dragons, the thought of treasure intrigued her. What better way to spend the time waiting for the airship?

  She had just decided to roust Berikarth to dig around the ruins site when she noticed a dark stain on the end of the south breakwater. It was darker than even the blackened burn marks she had left.

  When she approached to examine the stain, she saw a broken ink bottle atop the rock. The ink stain trailed off into a crevasse between the boulders, the line of ink ending a short way down. It seemed to point, like a dark claw, to a small book caught just above the waterline.

  Theria stared at it for a moment. It was no good; any shift of these boulders would send it into the water. And it was small, even for a human tome; her dragon claws could not handle such a thing without harming it, even if she could reach into that small space.

  She sighed, looked around to make sure none of the others were nearby, and closed her eyes to concentrate. Finding the proper pattern stored in her mind, she drew it out and filled it with her spirit. It was difficult with such a small container, but she persevered and felt her form shift.

  She didn’t know many shapes of the lesser races; in fact, this was the only one she bothered with. She had already decided that she would never take the form of one of the hated humans. An elf form may be more suitable for riding in an airship, but not as practical as a flying dragon.

  Usually,
it was a good thing that the clothes and gear one was last wearing in humanoid form were stored with the spirit form, and reappeared when returning to that shape. Theria had learned that it was rarely acceptable to be unclothed in humanoid societies.

  On the airship, they had given up telling her how a red ball gown was not practical clothing when she pointed out how impractical the whole small, thin-skinned, humanoid form was, and how it would be better if she just remained a dragon.

  Secretly, she thought that if she had to give up the most beautiful form in the world for a while, she should at least look good in the new shape.

  So, she stood on the end of the breakwater as a pale, soft biped, in a beautifully red, flowing gown with black silk roses, multiple buckles, and devious catches in nearly impossible-to-reach places. Her long red hair blew in the sea breeze with her gown, and as she pushed it out of her face, she thought again how impractical it all was.

  Less than a quarter-hour later, she walked across the breakwater, back to shore, victorious. The gown was shed and cast off on the rocks behind her. She wore only the thin satin underdress.

  The book was now in her hand, and she was a little wiser about the limitations of the humanoid form. But if the cursed metallic dragons could handle the forms of lesser races, then by the five-headed lady, so could she!

  She did wonder how the human girl had seemed to fit so easily into the crevice; was she that much slimmer than this form? Theria supposed the main problems in that narrow space were these large mammal things in the front—did humanoid young really require such quantities of milk? Also, the extra padding in the tail area didn’t help, either. She wondered if she just hadn’t gotten the form right, but the princess had assured her it was perfect.

  As she passed the beach-end of the breakwater, she snagged the basket with one hand, the straw hat with the other, and then settled on the warm sandy beach. It was time to try the contents of both the basket and the book.