PART II
Blood
Chapter Eight
When Crystal and Zahrellion left to help Aikira in the Outlands, Clover seized the moment and took Princess Amelia by the hand. With her powerful dragon tear, she teleported them up to Crimzon’s side.
“You’re going with me,” Clover said simply.
“To see the elves?” Amelia asked, stopping Clover cold.
“Yes.” Clover didn’t see the point in lying. “You’re going to stick your hand in a hole in a box, and if the thing inside draws blood, the elves will kill you.”
“They didn’t kill you.”
“The creature didn’t draw my blood.”
“Yes, it did, but Crimzon healed you faster than you could pull your arm out.” The little girl was looking at Clover in a way that unnerved even her.
“I’m going to kill the thing in the box.” Amelia crossed her arms across her chest, her expression as firm as her stance.
Clover felt a chill slide up her spine. At this point in her long life, such a happening wouldn’t surprise her. “Well, I’m not sure what the elves will do to us if you do such a thing.” She helped the child into Crimzon’s saddle and then mounted behind her. “Besides, you don’t even know what is in there.”
“Do you know what’s in there?” Amelia asked.
The genuine curiosity in the little girl’s voice scared Clover. What the over-intelligent nine-year-old said next scared her even more.
“Do you know what my father and mother, and the other Dragoneers born from your own will, will do to you and those elves if you do not return me unharmed?”
“I’m no mystica, girl,” Clover scoffed. “Were I that powerful, I would have willed myself free of that bastard priest’s prison. I spent nearly three centuries in that hell.”
“You are a mystica, Clover,” Amelia said. “Just ask Crimzon. He won’t lie to you. The Dragoneers are your willborn, but I am more than a mystica, and I will pull that thing out of that box and kill it, if it is the last thing I do.”
“You have a will.” Clover decided she liked the girl’s boldness. “And at least you have one thing right. If you pull that thing out of its binding, it might be the last thing you ever do. Now tell me, lass,” Clover was the one curious now, “how do you know of the elves and all of this?”
“I can read anyone’s thoughts I want to.” Amelia giggled, and gasped as Crimzon lifted into flight and banked away from the castle sharply. “Even the dragons’.”
Hearing this made Crimzon and Clover both shiver.
*
Rikky, sensing that Jenka had just bought him some time, had his wyrm use the dragon tear to cast a shielding around them. He didn’t quite understand why Marcherion and Blaze didn’t actually hit the stone-covered street, but he saw they did get injured, and were struggling now. He cast as potent a healing spell as he could from a distance. Jenka suddenly appeared, as Aikira sang out: They are attacking the Outlands in swarms! Then Jenka was blasted sideways by the same mudged-riding bastard that had hammered March.
Rikky didn’t often use his power to attack. He was a healer and a woodsman at heart, and the idea of this war sickened him, but this was his homeland, and Jenka was his friend, and the rightful king. Richard was nothing but a murderous torturer who was as much demon inside as Gravelbone had been. Rikky’s angst reached a peak, and he shot a blast with his teardrop at the rider’s mudged wyrm, just to trick the thing into position for Silva to let loose a gout of molten pewter liquid that hardened as it flowed around the wizard’s shielding spell.
Rikky let out a roar of his own. “Tell your foul, demon-riding king that I am the one who killed Gravelbone, and I will kill him, and his hell wyrm, too!”
What happened next was just as surprising to Rikky as it was to the man on the mudged wyrm.
The weight of all Silva’s hardened spew caused the man and his wyrm to suddenly flip upside down and fall from the sky, as if they were tethered to the pull of the field inside the bubble.
Rikky had known the weight would bring them down, but he hadn’t figured on it getting under them. Either way, the men on the ground who tried to fill the rider full of spear holes were shocked to find themselves jabbing their pike blades into nothing but air and a destroyed mudged. At least the bastard dropped his teardrop before he teleported away.
“Don’t touch that crystal,” Rikky called as a man picked it up.
The poor soldier shook violently, and then his eyes made a popping sound and slid down his cheeks as he crumpled to the ground.
Rikky didn’t have to worry about it after that. No one else dared get near it.
Chapter Nine
“DO NOT TOUCH THOSE CRYSTALS!” Marcherion yelled. He and Blaze had scorched a few of the mudged fluttering over Jenka’s crunching impact, but when Rikky dropped the rider, the rest of the tainted dragons started fleeing the sky.
“All of you, get on a ship and go help fortify Freeman’s Reach,” Rikky called down. “They are attacking in force elsewhere. This was but a diversion.” He looked at Jade, who was shaking off their bad landing and stretching his wings, and Jenka, who was moving normally, but glowing a light shade of green all over, as his own magic, or maybe his alien nature, healed him. Then he looked at March.
“One of you please stay,” a man called from the wall.
“Yes, we are defenseless against them without you,” another added.
Everyone seemed to look at King Jenka then.
Jade knelt and allowed his bondmate to get in his saddle. They rose up to the level of the wall, and Jenka spoke in that slow, drawn-out way that drove Marcherion mad, but here it seemed to emphasize what he was telling these soldiers.
“A few- hundred-years- ago, less- than- the- lot- of you here- kept us all alive against hundreds of those puny vermin.” Jenka pointed to one of the mudged lying dead against a corner of a stair leading up to the wall top. It had the shaft from one of the dragon guns stuck through it.
“One of us will return when we can,” Rikky said, trying to hurry it along.
March added, “You can kill them. They bleed just like you and me.” He put on a leather glove and picked up the dragon tear that had killed the poor soldier with its rush of power. He looked at the men looking at him and said, “Go fortify Freeman’s, and take the heads of these dead mudged to pike high on the towers when you get there.”
Come, Jenka commanded in the ethereal, we must go fight the real battle now.
As Marcherion remounted Blaze, he saw that Jenka was already opening a portal. Through the growing hole that would take them to the sky above the Outlands, he could see more mudged wyrms than he had ever imagined.
*
Zahrellion sensed her son’s worry over Amelia but couldn’t do anything about it at the moment. She and Aikira were in a sky full of thousands of mudged, trying to sustain a protective dome over an area they had packed in with people. They’d constructed the shield with Aikira’s wizardry and Zahrellion’s powerful druidic magic, and were now taking turns allowing other citizens to enter through small, street-level gaps they would open when they could.
Zahrellion also sensed Clover was doing what had to be done, for after all, Zah herself had some of the alien blood intermingled inside her. She’d had her skin tattooed with the stuff when she was but Amelia’s age and starting to show signs of great power. She had never known her mother or father, or their origin, save for what Linux had told her about them being Mainland settlers who died in a troll attack.
More than anything that she understood about her daughter was that she was as powerful as her father, if not more so, and could most likely defend herself from anything with her wit alone. Milly’s natural arcane ability was so much further advanced than anything Zahrellion or Linux had ever seen, that there seemed little to worry about.
Jericho was another story. He was still mostly a boy, but as dashing as any prince had ever been. He was extremely handy with a sword, but he didn’t have a
lick of magical ability about him, nor did he seem to want to. He shared Zahrellion’s tainted blood, but he was conceived not long before Jenka was consumed by the alien, so the part of Jenka that made Milly so odd wasn’t in Jericho. He was, for all intents and purposes, just a normal teenage boy.
She decided that wasn’t quite true. He was being trained by the best huntsmen alive, and was the crown prince of the realm. She also decided that his normality, versus Jenka’s, or Milly’s, lack of it, seemed so much more appropriate to sit a throne.
She was using the rest of her concentration to allow a few more Outland citizens into the protective field, when Aikira sang out to her.
They are out there now. Her voice was a melody of sung words coming from some distant part of her mind that wasn’t enraptured by the magic she was wielding. We must set this field in place and join them.
Chapter Ten
Marcherion, Rikky, and Jenka were surrounded by hundreds of mudged wyrms. The entire sky over the Outlands was filled with them. To the people below, it must have been like a cloud, for the city was bathed in shadow, save the great circle where Aikira and Zahrellion were protecting those they could.
Marcherion had to admit he was a little scared, but Rikky stole the thought right from his mind when he spoke to them all in the ethereal.
At least they aren’t Sarax. Rikky laughed. Then he turned Silva sharply into a tight, upward spiraling climb. The Nightshade is mine, March.
Not if I get it first, Marcherion replied. Then to the rest of the Dragoneers he explained, We only have to kill the riders and the Nightshade. The rest will abandon the cause once they’ve no one left to give them orders.
This field is set, Aikira sang out, her ethereal voice sounding a little exhausted.
I’m coming, Zahrellion said. Aikira will follow after she’s gotten her breath. Warn those still in the streets, and watch yourselves. Frozen mudged are about to be falling from the sky by the score.
Now it’s starting to feel like home, March joked as he turned to see Jenka speed off into an emerald blur of motion.
March let one of the mudged get close enough to nearly claw him, but Blaze batted it from the sky with his long, sinuous tail. March let his anger rise and felt the heat rise from the medallion he wore around his neck. He felt his eyes grow hot, and then he vomited forth a pulse of scarlet energy that engulfed all the mudged it impacted. The heat of his eyes grew, and then suddenly rays were shooting, slicing meat from bone, and searing wing from wyrm anywhere and everywhere the fine streams of angry power touched.
In less than a minute, there were half as many mudged in the sky as there had just been.
We’ve a chance, Aikira sang, as Golden carried her out of her protective field and into the battle-filled sky.
March’s eye rays extinguished their rageful burst, and he was just about to agree with her. Then the sky beyond the battle opened up. Coming through this portal was King Richard, sitting proudly on his Nightshade, with at least thrice the number of mudged that had just attacked. These were all flying in organized, ranked formation behind him.
March was still battling the mudged over the city and felt his heart sink when Richard didn’t send the newly arrived wyrms down into the fray. Instead, Richard positioned the huge, hovering swarm in such a way as to blot out the sun from the whole of the battle.
March swallowed hard and took in a deep breath. His rage was boiling over again, and this time, when fine crimson streaks burst from his eyes, he scanned row, after row, after row of Richard’s obedient wyrms, and in a matter of seconds ended a hundred or more of them. A whole series of bright lime green webbings crawled across the ordered ranks hovering above the other end, and a third of them flared bright yellow as they were incinerated into mist in an instant.
It was only then that March saw Richard snarl down at them and raise his left fist. His hand was full of cold, grey dragon tears, and in his right fist was a single dragon’s tear, larger even than Clover’s. A hum filled the air, as if all the power were being drawn out of everything around them, then a blast erupted from Richard that left a crater the size of ten ships in the city’s heart and sent everyone, even the Dragoneers, tumbling away from the ring of force that came flaring outward.
*
Clover was leery. Eventually, Crimzon admitted he had healed her before her arm came out of the box, but the two of them were baffled by Milly. Clover understood now that the Dragoneers, maybe even the wrecking of the Dogma, were a product of her will. After pondering what Princess Amelia had said, and confirming with Crimzon the truth of it, she was on Amelia’s side, no matter the outcome. If Crimzon had helped her pass before, he had a reason, or maybe a belief in her. In her eyes, Crimzon was not just an alpha dragon, he was the alpha dragon. His wisdom, and his mamra’s, which they’d garnered through the teardrop she’d shed for them, was the wisdom she would never question. Clover believed that with her very soul.
They used a teleportal and arrived not long after leaving the sky over Clover’s castle. As Crimzon carried them down through the protective field that covered the elven sanctuary, the air went from frigid to spring-like in an instant. All three of them, especially the huge fire dragon, had to shiver off the cold. Once they’d acclimated themselves with a few slow circles of the warmer sky, they landed before an alert escort of metallic-haired elves ranging from engrossingly beautiful to gnarled and crab-like. All of them shied away from the group, but Clover was certain they were shying away more from Amelia than from her, or her dragon, this time.
“Please, follow us,” asked one of the most beautiful women Clover had ever seen, as she nodded and started them on the forest trail that would lead them to the Heart Tree.
They rose on the platform, and all eyes were on the pallid girl with hair the color of blood standing beside Clover. They passed the bloom of a dangling ultraphlora on the way up, and one of its large, glassine petals reflected them in a slightly wavering fashion as they went. Had she not had the brown of the sun in her skin, she would have looked exactly like she was Amelia’s mother. Even the sun’s toning of her complexion couldn’t hide the resemblance. Both of them saw the similarity so striking that they could be mother and daughter, or siblings, but neither of them showed a hint of fear. Clover was concerned that this might get ugly, but her dragon was close, and Amelia, she sensed, was far more powerful than her, or her dragon tear.
When they entered the Oracle’s knothole, Clover saw that the elf was in her chair, covered with a blanket, and looked somewhat normal. Amelia stared at the very same disfigured elves that were staring back at her. She looked back up at Clover and raised her eyebrows twice, as if she were playing a game with her handmaidens.
Clover decided that Amelia probably didn’t have handmaidens, or even friends, and she understood that, too. “Go on,” she whispered. “Stand before the Oracle and let us get on with it.”
We may have to fight our way out of here, Amelia’s voice whispered in a thin thread of the ethereal.
Yesssss, came Crimzon’s hiss.
It didn’t surprise Clover when her dragon responded, but the tinge of eagerness in his voice made her heart race, and her hand slid casually to the dragon tear in her belt-pouch.
Chapter Eleven
KEEP THEM OFF OF US! Zahrellion screamed through the ethereal.
It had taken the dragons several moments to get the wind back under their wings after Richard cratered the heart of the city and stunned most of the fighting men on the ground.
Marcherion saw that, since the first shielding had held true against Richard’s blast, Zahrellion and Aikira were trying to construct another dome just like it. This one was in another area of the city, where there were still people trying to flee the winged terror. There were so many mudged that, even though his sheer rage had killed more than a hundred of them, the sky was still full of them. They darted down at will to snatch a person, or blast a structure into flames. They were everywhere.
He couldn’t see
Jenka or Jade, but here a mudged was crackled over with yellow glowing power and puffed into a green mist, and there the foggy grey cloud of Jade’s poisonous breath would appear among a clump of mudged and they would fall from the sky.
Before Zahrellion came back to help Aikira, she and Crystal had iced over a score of the damn things. They weren’t attacking the Dragoneers so much as preventing them from helping to stop the bloody Outlander feast they were having.
March let the memory of Richard’s snarl reignite his fury. He used his eye rays and the powerful balls of wizard fire he vomited forth to cover Aikira and Zahrellion.
He noticed that Jenka and Jade were helping him, too, but he still couldn’t see them, save for the rare glimpse of streaking green, when Blaze’s keener senses would feel them near.
He’d lost Rikky in the fray, but knew his old hunting partner was the most capable and determined of them all, so he wasn’t worried. Soon, March was lost in the heat of his anger. He and Blaze, with Jenka’s help, did well to allow a second shielding dome to be constructed, but by then they were all worn to the edges of exhaustion. There were hundreds of mudged still in the sky. Worse, Richard’s Nightshade and his remaining ranks were now hovering between the city and the moon, so the whole city was bathed in little more than shadow and blood.
*
“What is in there?” Amelia asked the Oracle, as two of the attendants presented a box that was about a pace long and half a pace wide and deep. It had carvings in three languages Amelia could recognize, and then there were the marks she’d been hoping to see, and some she didn’t understand. “Do you even know?”
Blood and Royalty Page 4