by Greg Curtis
“This is no small task I am giving you, and I expect that you will be busy from dawn until dusk every day, while in the evenings you will be reading from the tomes on gardening, masonry and carpentry which I have managed to replace. You would be wise to ask your family to come and assist you in your duties as there will be a lot of work to do.”
“In fact you may as well begin now. While I finish here, please put the cauldron on for a cup of tea and get out a couple of pieces of the preserved fruit loaf for both of us. Then while it boils you can start assessing the work that needs to be done for yourself.” He felt like a rabid dog as he spoke, issuing the commands at her as if she was a servant in truth, but he knew it had to be done. As Ant had said to him once, sometimes commanding people can be a blessing for them as well. Work takes people’s minds off their troubles, and commands take away the need to think. Least ways, Ashiel said nothing as she wandered over to the kitchen to do as he asked and for that he was grateful.
She had a long road ahead of her, many months or even years before she could face what had happened to her and move on, but that she had to do. Yet as she vanished from his sight an even more terrible thought began to plague him. A question that tore at his soul.
Had she truly given herself to Afri? Or had he just taken what was never his? From where that awful thought came he didn’t know. But the pain he had seen in her eyes, the death in her heart, it was almost so great and so deep that it spoke of such awful evil. And Afri had been that evil.
Yet, even if he was right to wonder and though he could never ask, he could do nothing else for her. Ant had given him his instructions whether he’d told him directly or not, and Alan knew he had his reasons. Ashiel did not need comforting. She was small and she was a woman but she was not weak. She needed to find her own strength again. And he could not do that for her.
Though it was terrible, he had to be harsh. It was the only way he could help her.
Chapter Seventeen.
“Mercy!”
From the moment he saw the bone dragon Alan knew he was in trouble; a lot of it. With only four elementals to his name, two storms and two infernos both tied up completely with the dozen bone drakes as they tried to keep them away from him, there was nothing left to defend him against this new threat. It was simply unfair, and it was too soon! The necromancer shouldn’t even be working on the bone drakes yet if the stories of his previous attack were anything to go by, and as for a true bone dragon, they had only appeared right at the end. He was months and months ahead of schedule.
Despite that Alan immediately fled the battle as fast as he could. Too soon and unfair or not, he knew his only hope of surviving was getting as far away from the bone dragon as fast as he could; he didn’t have the magic to fight one. Unfortunately being in the form of a Roc, fleeing wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Roc’s were terrific long distance fliers, and they could reach great heights, but they weren’t the fastest, and his first job had to be to shape shift into an eagle in mid-air, even as he fled for his life.
Just when things had been going so well too. Only five days into his mission, and already he’d reached his destination, the ancient city from Sir Neeveon’s records which the dragons had in turn told him was even older than those of the ancients. This was a city of the progenitors, maybe, and possibly the one from which the ancients and the necromancer had obtained their fragments of the book of days. It was beginning to look as though they might be right, as the city itself was a hundred and fifty leagues northwest of S’mon Gorge, and yet already the necromancer had sent out his strongest soldiers to defend it, probably while more of his minions searched it for more pages from the book. Maybe he should have expected it.
At least, he thought as the panic all but consumed him, he had committed no terrible crime to feel ashamed of if and when he met his creator. He had been small and petty perhaps, hidden himself away rather than trusting others, but he had done good rather than evil wherever he had the chance, and he had spared his enemies and tried to help his friends. Surely that would count in his favour. But then there was Ashiel, and he still felt terrible shame for her.
He had done everything he could for her. Given her plenty of work to take her mind off her pain, given her words to bring her hope, and when even that wasn’t enough, had spoken with her mother and asked her to visit her while she worked, even to stay with her in his home if that was her wish. Maran he remembered had been grateful for his words and his offer, and not once had he felt any anger or blame sent his way from her.
Nor in the rest of New Huron when he had returned there, had he noticed a lot of upset people determined to take umbrage with him. They knew who he was even though he had never changed form back into his human self, and though many stared at him, after all it wasn’t every day a roc landed and started asking for directions to a particular home, none had been rude. In fact they had all been polite and almost friendly as they guided him towards Maran’s home. Time, the words of the dragons and the work of the dryads was healing their pain. Though it was not a good thing for a warrior to think of at such a time, it was something to hold to as he heard the great wings of the terrible bone dragon beating in the air behind him and knew it was getting closer, much closer. He could almost feel its teeth as they bit him in two.
Dive! The hope clutched at him as he saw the twisted and broken mountain range below him with its hundreds of chimney pipes extending into the air around the central plateau, and realized that he had only one advantage against the bone dragon. Stuck halfway as he was between an eagle and a roc, too panicked to complete the change, his ability to twist and turn through tight spaces was his only edge. With every ounce of speed he could muster he did just that, heading for the broken mountains faster than any arrow ever given flight.
He was only just quick enough as he reached the nearest vertical cylinder of rock and spun around it, as a lick of dragon flame touched his tail and burnt him badly. He screamed, unable to help himself as the pain bit hard, but he didn’t stop flying. That would be death. Behind him the bone dragon gave chase, flying straight into the chimneys as fast as it could, but it simply couldn’t bank and twist as he could, and soon, as he went lower and lower where the bases of the chimneys widened and the spaces between them narrowed, it began falling behind.
For a while, a brief while, he began to feel almost hopeful, as if he had a chance of surviving this nightmare, but only until he realized he had a lot of other problems to deal with. For a start he couldn’t escape this terrible predator, only evade it while he remained in the middle of these few square leagues of rock chimneys, but once he left them he would be out in the open, and dead soon after. There was nowhere to hide, and none of his spells of illusion would work against either the undead or dragons, and this thing was both. And he simply wasn’t strong enough to fight it. Yet ironically, that was his only choice. Somehow he had to defeat this evil thing.
Desperate, already tired, and still not completely transformed, he began summoning his simplest elementals; air elementals. Not only were they the most he could concentrate on right then between his pain and fear and his desperate need to fly directly between the stone columns, they were probably also the only ones that could upset the dragon until he had a chance to find a hiding place and rest for a few hours and raise an army of infernos.
One by one he sent them back after the bone dragon, and while he didn’t dare turn around to see how they were doing, he heard the screams as the undead creature became enraged by its all but invisible foes. Of course they couldn’t do the creature any harm, that was beyond them, but being made out of air, they could disrupt its flight, and that was exactly what they were doing, buffeting the bone dragon’s wings with unexpected blasts of wind and destroying its ability to fly straight. Best of all, it had no defence against them, and it had to put up with them as it gave chase, and every so often crashed into something, hard.
Those impacts, the sound of rock breaking under the awesome might of the bone drag
on, were like music to his ears, and they gave him hope. Enough so that he could concentrate a little more as he fled and finally complete his shape change to become the eagle, the fastest and most agile bird he knew. And then, when he’d finally managed that, he started creating a small army of air elementals to continue his work.
He called two or three score of the elementals before the screams of the bone dragon were far enough behind him that he dared to look back and see how it was doing. What he saw was enough to give him even more hope as he saw the bone dragon being blown about in every direction by their combined assault. It had even been spun around and left reeling. It was a good sight, but the beast was still strong, and despite everything it was still giving chase, simply smashing through the winds. That was a worry. If fifty or so air elementals could do little more than annoy it and slow it down, he was in trouble. But then he’d known he was in trouble from the instant he’d spied this beast.
What he needed he realized, was a bolt hole, a safe place to hide and regroup his magic, and raise an army. What he needed was a cave. One that was long and narrow, too narrow for a bone dragon to enter, and too long for its fire to reach him.
With the bone dragon falling further behind him he began moving closer to the central mountain range itself, hunting out caves or anything that looked like it that could quickly be made into one. There were very few options he discovered, with most of the caves he could see being far too large. Large enough that even if the bone dragon couldn’t fly into them, it could surely crawl, and he had no way of telling how deep any of them were. This nightmare could cast fireballs hundreds of yards and that was a very deep cavern indeed.
His choices however, suddenly became more limited as the bone dragon decided on a new tactic. Tired of being unable to fly between the stone chimneys as easily as him, especially when the air elementals were constantly sending it spinning off in strange directions and often into the chimneys themselves which weren’t yielding even to its unnaturally tough bones, it started blasting them with black fire balls. Huge explosions that sent rocks flying in every direction as they hit, and sooner or later he knew, some of those rocks would hit him. Even if they didn’t, eventually the chimneys themselves would collapse, leaving him without any cover. The beast might be dead or undead, but it could still plan.
Alan knew he had to find some shelter, fast.
He started desperately weaving his way through the huge stone towers as fast as he could, trying to stay near the side of the central plateau where he hoped a cave might show up, trying to stay as far out of range of the bone dragon as he could, and all the time he heard the sound of towering chimneys of rock being hit by his black fire balls, and toppling, spraying rocks like porcupine quills each time, some of them coming far too close for comfort.
Then, just when he was beginning to think there was no hope and that the bone dragon was simply too powerful for him, he spied what he needed at the foot of the mountain range. It was a large, but hopefully not too large, cave with a waterfall running out of its mouth. He had no idea at all how deep it might be, and he was terrified that the bone dragon might be able to fly into it after him as it was almost big enough, but he knew it was his only chance, the only cave, and he dived for it without a second thought. He dived as only an eagle could.
The cave grew fast in front of him, terrifyingly fast since he’d never tried landing at this sort of speed before and he already knew he was destined to crash land if he was lucky. But when a spray of fire shot past over his head to smash into the chimney just in front of him, it still didn’t seem fast enough, and he pulled his head and wings in tighter and prayed. Then at the last instant, just when the cave was almost opening up to swallow him, he banked, hard, feeling the terrible strain as the air buffeted against him, almost threatening to rip his wings off. He was going to be sore in the morning. If he saw the morning.
Somehow he managed it, flying into the cave faster than any arrow ever given flight, and he knew a brief instant of cheer before discovering a whole new terror; he was blind. The cave was pitch black and he had no idea at all what lay ahead as he flew straight at it. All he could do then was dive, dashing for the water he could hear running underneath, and hoping the impact would be small. It wasn’t.
He hit something, hard, felt bones give way in his shoulder, and knew he was in trouble, just before he stopped flying altogether and crashed down into the icy cold water beneath. But at least it wasn’t his head, and as he screamed, or tried to, he still knew enough to know he was alive, and life meant hope. Somehow, even through the pain, he was able to struggle to the surface of the river, where he discovered a whole new problem; the river was carrying him straight back out towards the front of the cave where he could suddenly see in the small patch of light that was its entrance and one angry looking bone dragon settling in and preparing to cook him.
Alan dived just as the huge black stream of fire passed over his head, turning the entire cave into an inferno above his head, and managed to dig his talons into the rocky river bed to keep himself from getting any closer. It worked, the water kept him cold and the fire overhead left him untouched which was good, but of course he quickly had another problem to deal with. He had to breathe, and soon. With his heart thundering in his chest he simply couldn’t hold his breath for any length of time.
Heartbeats later he had to risk sticking his head out of the river, and taking a quick gasp of life giving air, but even that was painful as he discovered the air tasted like it was burning. Still he breathed the sooty mess in, desperate, and tried to think of a plan as he watched in the distance as the bone dragon wrapped its bone wings tightly about its body and started trying to crawl its way into the cave. That could not happen.
He had a way to stop it, maybe, and even as the idea came to him he began summoning his earth elementals, not to attack the bone dragon, for they wouldn’t last a moment against the monster, but just to start pulling down the cave walls between them, and soon rocks were collapsing all around him. Of course that just angered the bone dragon and he had to dive as another blast of its black fire streaked through overhead.
The next time he came up, the air was worse. In fact it was absolutely foul and he started choking and threatening to vomit. But he didn’t let it stop his elementals in their work as they kept pulling down the cave, and somehow he managed to summon more of them to the task.
Soon, staggeringly soon, there was a dam between him and the bone dragon, easily twenty feet high, and when the bone dragon’s third blast streaked overhead, it was only a shadow of what had been. The rest had actually been stopped by the dam. But the air hadn’t got any better, and it was becoming harder and harder to breathe.
He had another problem too, though he hadn’t realised it until just then, but as he tried to crawl his way out of the river and onto the rock bank beside it, he could see dark stains everywhere, and he knew it was blood, his blood. That impact had hurt him, and from the looks of things, badly. Happily as the elementals quickly finished their task of walling him off from the bone dragon, the darkness took the sight away and he stopped worrying about it. Bad air, bad injuries, and a bone dragon slowly trying to crawl its way through a cave that was simply too tight for it, none of that mattered compared to the pain of his body as he finally managed to lever himself all the way out of the river.
Then there was the new pain as he tried to crawl further back into the cave away from the bone dragon and the wall, and it was terrible, especially when he was still in the form of a giant eagle, a shape that simply wasn’t built for crawling, even before he had broken his shoulder. But still he did it, forcing himself to clamber along the cold stone floor, wing over wing, and slowly the roar of the dragon as it grew more and more frustrated, lessened. Maybe that was just the rock wall simply growing bigger.
In time, and it was a long time, he made his way so far into the cave’s interior that he could no longer hear the bone dragon at all. That was good, but the silence of the river was
bad, and he realised he’d made a mistake. The rock wall had dammed up the cave, and soon the river would be rising, flooding everything and drowning him. He had to be gone before that happened.
Panicking a little more he tried to crawl faster, and when that wasn’t enough, summoned an earth elemental to carry him through the cave. At least it was faster than him, even if it wasn’t gentle. The earth knew nothing of gentle and he knew too much of pain, and he couldn’t stop himself gasping with its every step.
In time, and it felt like hours as every torturous bump of the elemental’s gait was somehow passed through to his broken body, he could make out the sound of water cascading and even see a little light. He knew then that he was close to the entrance where the water entered the cave, and that was good. Better was when he finally reached the chamber where the water entered, and he could see it was another waterfall. Some of the water from a mountain river was simply travelling sideways through a fissure in the rock, and then falling easily another fifty feet to splash down into a deep cavern, before making its way through the cave to the waterfall at the end. The bone dragon, even if it found this place, could never make it through that fissure. Better still was that the air was finally fresh. But the best of all was that he knew how to stop the water from rising and drowning him.