by Alan Marble
The old man was still alive. Rolling onto his back, he looked up at Jonah with watery blue eyes and forced a sort of half smile. “Ah. You’re going to have to tell Ibrahim that he was right. It wasn’t worth the power.”
“I hear you, Carl,” the crimson dragon said, near enough that his voice carried clearly.
Carolus looked somehow immensely older as he lay there splayed out on the rock. The white hair that fell over his temples was thin and ragged, giving him a sort of wild and unkempt look. The wrinkles and creases in his face seemed to have deepened, making his eyes look sunk in, yet still he tried to smile. “Ibrahim, my brother. I was blinded by my own ambition … it wasn’t until I saw what he did to the others. I didn’t think he was going to kill them. I was just trying to do what was right …”
A roar in the distance caught Jonah’s attention. Turning to look back over his shoulder, he could see the other dragons, the ones who had been circling over the explosions, now looked to be retreating, wheeling their way off into the distance. “They’re leaving,” he whispered softly.
“Listen,” Carolus said, his voice growing thin in his throat. “I don’t have much time to explain. The clan can be redeemed. The spell that has been placed upon them is not permanent, not yet. They are going to Olympus, they are going up the mountain. At the last light of the day their fate will be sealed. You have to help them.”
Glancing back down at the old man, Jonah frowned. “I don’t understand. Up the mountain?”
The old man seemed to be growing weaker by the moment, his eyes closing as he coughed. “Redeem them for me. Redeem me with them.”
“Carl.” It was Abe, who had pulled himself up from the ground some, speaking low and steady. “Listen to me old friend. You need to tell us how to do it. How do we redeem them? What can we do?”
“Make them remember.” Carolus swallowed deeply, struggling for breath. “Remember who they are. What they are. They are not gone, only hidden … make them remember … they have the elder, going to corrupt. You must go. You must hurry.”
Jonah glanced back and forth between Abe who was looming nearby and Carolus beneath him, who was quickly fading. “I still don’t understand. How do we make them remember?”
The old man gasped softly then opened his eyes again, looking up at him with those watery blue irises, smiling weakly. “Go after her, Jonah. Save her. I’m sorry …” When his eyes closed one more time, breathing out a long, low gasp, Jonah did not have to be told that the old man was gone.
“Rest well, old friend,” Abe said quietly, reverently, letting his head dip earthward. “The clan will know that you died a friend and not a foe. You died a hero, not a traitor.”
For the next moment silence reigned, the only sound was that of nature itself: the wind winding its way through the valley, the occasional clatter of a rock or stone as it made its journey down the mountainside. Jonah felt like he ought to say something, but had no clue what to say. He didn’t even know how he was supposed to feel.
“Well. We can’t just stay here all day long, you heard what he said. We have until nightfall to try and undo what’s been done,” Abe finally spoke up, bringing himself back up to his feet and glancing up into the sky.
For some reason, he felt suddenly miserable. “I’m still not even sure what he was talking about.”
“Olympus. It’s a mountain peak not far from here, just a few miles. Sounds like they’re going to enact some kind of ritual. I’m not sure what it is,” the crimson dragon said, his voice rumbling slightly against the rocks. “But there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of time. We’ve probably only got an hour of daylight left.”
Jonah glanced upward to the sky, as well. The sun had already hidden itself behind the mountainside that he was resting on, and he could not be sure how far it had sunk at all, but as he glanced away into the valley he could see the shadows beginning to grow long against the opposite side. “How badly hurt are you? Do you think we even have a chance?”
Abe shrugged his shoulders, stretching his wings out with a cringe. Several parts of one wing were scorched and showing signs of tearing, and as he moved them up and down he let out a little gasp of pain. “Well. I think I can at least give it a shot,” he said.
“Makes two of us.” Jeffress, who had fallen himself not long ago, had managed to go airborne again and was now flying circles over the both of them. “But if we’re going to do this thing, let’s get moving. The others are long gone and we’ve got our work cut out if we’re going to catch up to them!”
Looking down at Carolus for a moment, Abe heaved softly. “We will return for you, old friend,” he murmured, forcing his wings into motion and picking himself up into the air with no small amount of grimacing, but as soon as he was in the air he breathed a long, low sigh. “Well. What do you say, kid? I don’t know about you but I’m not done pressing my luck for the day. How about we give the dice one last toss?”
Jonah breathed in deeply, taking a step back before he finally nodded. Grim as their chances might be, a chance was a chance. Rebekah might still be out there, still be alive, and if she was, she deserved at least that much. Launching himself into the air, he looked off into the distance. “Lead the way.”
TWENTY THREE
Tree studded valleys gave way to barren stone, which itself slowly gave way to snow and ice as they gained altitude, soaring ever near the highest mountain peak that Jonah could see : Mount Olympus. He vaguely remembered it being the name of the home of the Greek gods in mythology, and somehow the fact seemed significant to him. He was just not certain why.
“All right, Jeffress. Tell me what we’re up against.”
Abe had taken the lead, the largest, oldest and presumably most powerful of the three. Jonah was content to follow slightly behind, opposite the dragon he had only recently met, a small if orderly formation cutting through the thinning mountain air. Not really knowing what they were getting into, he let himself wander a little closer to ensure he did not miss anything.
“Three more mages,” Jeffress began, shouting slightly to make sure he was heard. “No administrators, but still. They’ll be accompanied by three bulls, as well as whatever members of our clan that they’ve managed to keep under their control. They have the elder with them and I’m pretty sure they’ve got something in mind for him. I’m just not sure what.”
“So that makes it one mage and one bull for each of us. I like those odds,” the big dragon said, chuckling throatily.
Jeffress laughed in kind although he sounded somewhat less jovial about it. “Well, I know you’re the betting sort so you’ll be happy to know that our odds will be a little more even than that. The mages are likely to be involved in some kind of ceremony that they don’t want to interrupt, so there’s a good chance they’ll be out of the picture at first. The clan, too, if they’re going to be a part of the ritual.”
“Just one bull apiece, then? Even better than I thought!”
It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought to Jonah. He remembered the encounter with the bulls back in the lonely valley, where Rebekah had been taken. Between the two of them, they had been unable to best the creature, and as far as he had been able to tell, none of their clan had much luck against them in a one on one situation. Perhaps with a fearsome power like Jenna had wielded, but he didn’t even know that he had one at all.
Abe seemed to have picked up on his somewhat darkening mood, chuckling a little more quietly. “You look somber over there, kid. Don’t forget what I told you before. As long as there’s a chance, there’s hope. You are fighting for something important to you, and that gives you an advantage over a bull drake any day of the week. Stay on your toes. Don’t let your guard down. You can do this.”
He glanced over at the crimson dragon with a sort of frown. “Look, I appreciate what you are trying to do, but …”
“No buts,” the older male interrupted, glancing ahead toward the approaching mountain peaks. “If you tell yourself you’re going to lose
then you’ve already lost. I’m sure you’ve heard that before somewhere, but it just goes to show that I’m not making this up. Come, now. They’ll likely be expecting us, but let’s see if we can get at least an idea of what we’re getting into here.” Diving slowly toward the nearest peak, Abe settled in on the ridge line just shy of the tallest point, Jonah and Jeffress coming in for a landing on either side of him.
Olympus rose up perhaps a few hundred yards away from them, a series of peaks that rose high enough to shed their snowy confines and bare their bald stone to the sky above. Between where they had landed and the tallest peaks was a sort of small valley filled with snow and ice. The way it spilled out down the valley to lower altitude, the little cracks and crevices in the ice, resembled something that Jonah had seen before, on some nature show.
He had never seen a glacier before in his life. In other circumstances it might have looked almost beautiful, stark white creeping along the earth so slowly that it had to be measured in inches per year.
It wasn’t what really caught his attention. On a broad, flat patch of snow near where the head of the glacier - he couldn’t tell if it was on the ice or on the mountainside itself - a scene was unfolding. Dragons, four of them, were standing on the surface facing in toward each other, evenly spaced and perhaps at the points of the compass. He couldn’t tell, and didn’t really care, either way. Even from this distance he could easily make out the sleek black figure of one of them, and at least one of his questions was answered.
Rebekah was alive.
Directly in the center of the assembled dragons was what might have been some kind of makeshift altar, a cairn of stones, atop which an unmoving figure was sprawled out. It was too far for him to know for certain simply by looking but he was confident it must have been the elder, based on what Jeffress had said.
Beyond the dragons, spaced at even intervals to form an equilateral triangle, were three more figures, their arms outstretched to their sides. There was no visible magic, no magic at all that Jonah could discern but he assumed they were the mages that had been mentioned. Beyond that there was no sign of anyone else, no hint of the three bull drakes that Jeffress had mentioned. That their whereabouts were unknown made his skin crawl.
Abe had noticed their absence, as well. “You said there were three bulls.”
“There are,” Jeffress mumbled a little absently, canting his head back and looking around, scanning the skies overhead. “You said it yourself, these guys are probably expecting us. They could be patrolling the area.”
“Well, it looks like we’ve gone unnoticed so far, so we’ll go ahead and say that the odds just tilted a little bit more in our favor. There’s no way we’re going to get down there without being seen, however, so we’re going to have to make our move and make it fast. We’ll take out the mages as quickly as we can. Jonah, hit the one on the left. Jeffress, the right, and I’ll take the one on the far side. Do you think the clan will attack?”
Jeffress breathed out a little snort. “Sorry Abe, I have no idea. Looks like they’re a part of this ritual down there so the mages will keep them in place until they absolutely cannot hold off any longer. My guess is that they’ll stay put until one or more of the mages looks to be in real trouble, and then they’ll come to their aid.”
Grunting a little as he peered downward at the ceremony underway, Abe nodded. “Makes sense to me. All the more reason to throw everything we’ve got at those mages as quick as we can. Soon as we have them down we’ll focus all of our efforts on the clan, try to shake them out of whatever spell they are under. Everyone got it?”
Before any of them could answer, the sound of stone bouncing against stone behind them caught their attention and all three turned their necks back simultaneously. Three men stood on the ridge where none had been before, silhouetted somewhat ominously against the clear sky beyond them. Thick, menacing, and powerful looking. Bull drakes.
Abe and Jeffress alike reacted with no need for instruction or discussion, leaping from the rocks they had perched on and throwing themselves with abandon at two of the intruders, leaving the third to stand there, staring Jonah down with an unnatural sense of confidence - or perhaps it was merely dispassionate indifference. Whichever it was it set Jonah on edge, but when he got a better look at the man staring him down, he felt his blood run cold. He had seen those dark, sinister eyes before, the raven black hair perched atop a head that seemed slightly too small for the shoulders it sat on. The small mountain of a man grunted down at him, flexing where he stood.
It shouldn’t have been possible. He had seen the truck go over the edge of the bridge; he had seen the aftermath of the crash on the news the following day. Stepping backward with fear building up in his eyes, Jonah shook his head. It shouldn’t have been possible, but then he, too, should have been dead. He had escaped, had lived to fight another day. So, too, had the bull drake.
As Jonah watched, the man snorted out loudly, a thin line of smoke pouring from his nostrils and wreathing his head like some kind of twisted, ethereal crown. The sounds of fighting at either side of him, snarling and roaring and the clashing of talons was heard but only just. His entire world was distilled in that moment down to nothing more than the man who was bearing down on him.
The man’s image warped. His arms seemed to thicken, stretching as he dove forward, his hands swelling and twisting into wicked claws that fell to the earth, grinding into the stone beneath them and snapping it into little shards. Wings sprouted from his sides as his torso rippled and grew, thickening out from a small mountain of a man to a small mountain of a dragon. Muddy brown scales tinged with yellow covered his body, thick and calloused, looking for all the world like impenetrable armor.
Wicked looking spikes protruded from every imaginable angle. The bull’s head was massive, a thick blocky shape that looked to be made of solid bone, jagged teeth sticking out much like a crocodile’s. With a menacing snort the big bull took a step toward him, more of that smoke trailing out from his nostrils.
Jonah was aware that he’d been stepping backward, his talons scrabbling against the loose rock when one of them slipped out from beneath him and he briefly lost his balance. The menacing creature in front of him leaped upon the opportunity and threw himself toward him with a thunderous roar.
Almost too late, Jonah pushed himself to the side and let his momentum carry him partially along the slope, just out of reach of the bull as the big male crashed in to the rock, sending tiny little shards all over the place. Gasping, he clutched at the air with his wings, pulled himself up off the mountainside and twisted himself around.
The others were occupied fending off their own opponents. Abe managed to hold his own, nearly the size of the bull and nearly as powerful, the two large dragons circling each other over the peak of the mountain, snapping and clawing at each other. Jeffress, smaller like himself, was darting in and around his own pursuer, keeping out ahead by only the smallest of margins. It wouldn’t have taken much of a misstep to spell trouble for him.
As much as he might have felt the urge to help, there was not a thing Jonah could do. The bull that had crashed into the mountainside was already recovering, righting himself among the scree and turning to face him with those deep, sinister eyes. The big jaw opened to let loose another roar, along with a jet of flame that came shooting toward Jonah with frightening speed.
Ducking the gout of flame, Jonah turned and let himself cut along down the slope of the ridge, staying just high enough off the rock that he didn’t risk grounding himself as his mind spun. This bull had the benefit of fire as well as size and strength, while Jonah felt practically defenseless. He might be able to out fly the creature, might be able to stay just ahead, but there was no way he was going to be able to match him in a fight.
He didn’t have to turn around to know he was being followed, the sound of wings heaving at the air behind him unnervingly close. Not the brightest, he’d heard the bulls described before. Perhaps he could out think his opponent
. Perhaps he could find some advantage.
Across the valley and on to the next ridge in the mountains, he spied a small but substantial bluff in the rock, a nearly sheer face exposed in contrast to the snowy slope around it. The foot of the cliff was littered with boulders of varying sizes, victims of the slow but inexorable pull of gravity on the mountain above. Large slabs of rock still clung to the side, and even at the top there were some sizable boulders that looked like they might be encouraged to come loose. If he could only think of a way to get the bull beneath them …
Another spray of fire at his back burned close enough to singe his scales, and with a little cry Jonah let himself dip downward, deeper into the valley, rushing in toward the cliff side as it grew ever nearer. Throwing a brief glance behind him and seeing that the bull was breathing down his neck, much too close for comfort, Jonah willed his wings into action and pushed himself forward with dizzying speed.
Reaching the floor of the valley, he had to start climbing again to keep aloft, sapping some of his forward momentum, but he’d already built up quite a bit in the dive. Turning all of his attention to the cliff rushing up to meet him, Jonah tried to mentally count out the seconds, estimate the distance. He would have to time himself just right. Too soon and he’d lose his opportunity. Too late and the bull drake would be the least of his worries.
Closer. Closer. The rocks beneath him transformed into a blur as he hugged the floor of the valley, hardly daring to breathe. Closer. Closer.
“Now,” he found himself shouting out loud, leaning his head back and angling his wings into the wind, cutting into them at a steep angle to force himself into a nearly vertical ascent. He could feel his weight shift, all of his insides seeming to pull down toward his legs, momentum pulling forward while he struggled to keep his wings at the right angle, struggled to keep himself moving upward, away from the rock.