Dragon's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 4)

by D J Salisbury

  “The hatchling–”

  “Shut up, toad.” She swung up to the driver’s platform and climbed over Kyri-thing, into the wagon. They’d need supplies if they were walking far. Lunch, for a start.

  Tsai followed her inside. “I thought you were going to leave me with that thing.”

  “Nah, I just wanted it to listen to me.” Not that the critter ever did, but it was fun teasing the both of them.

  She opened a cabinet door and glared into the miswoven cupboard. Jars of spices. A mostly-empty keg of vinegar. Maybe a cup of rice in the bottom of a barrel. “Ain’t there nothing left in here we can eat? There’s hardly enough rice for dinner, even if we skimp.”

  Tsai stepped around her, opened the cupboard hidden behind the chair’s backrest that the kid used for his magic crap, and pushed aside a pair of serdil skulls. “There’s a bunch of jars of white stuff in here.” She shook one. “Feels like powder or ground rice.”

  Something rattled around at the bottom of the cupboard.

  Tsai slammed the door shut. “Bog swallow it.”

  “Maybe it’s his emergency supplies.” Though why he’d hide ground rice, Lorel couldn’t imagine. She snatched the jar out of Tsai’s hand and knelt on the bench in front of the door. Weaver’s chamberpot, this place was too small for one girl at a time, much less two.

  Opening the door made her feel less smothered. “Hey, toad? What’s this stuff? Can we eat it?”

  The stupid snake’s eyes got big. “This one advises against consuming it. The substance will cause pronounced gastric distress.”

  She figured gastric meant gas. So what if it made them fart? “Distress. You mean pain?”

  The slithering toad nodded. Its flat face kinda relaxed.

  A gut ache was one thing she didn’t need. “But what is it?”

  “Triturated Hreshith skeletal residue.”

  Was the legless lizard cussing at her? Or just making up words? “In Zedisti, toad. Or Duremen-Lor, even.”

  The fraying beast actually sighed. “Dust from the bones of a Sea Empress.”

  Weaver’s cold toes. Why would the kid do that to a sea empress? “What’s it good for?”

  “Sorcerers exploit said dust as a source of power.” The toad managed to look disapproving. “The hatchling proposes to market the particulates in order to finance the Quest.”

  The toad’s quest to stop a Mindbender. She never thought about it much, but it must take a lot of money to travel through civilized places. Surely it cost a lot to buy a decent mug of beer. But she hated selling any part of a sea empress.

  She’d have a long talk with the kid, once she got him back.

  She let the door slam shut, grabbed the old hatchet from its spot near the stove, slid its leather loop onto her belt next to her short sword, and slid out under the door. “I’ll be back by nightfall.”

  Tsai squirmed under the door right behind her. “We’ll be back by night­fall.”

  “The swordlings–”

  “Shut up, toad.” Lorel jumped to the ground and glared at the legless lizard. “Now, where is he?”

  The fraying wiggler pointed its tail southeast and upward, dipped its head under the door, and slithered inside the wagon.

  Tsai scooted out of the beastie’s way. “Not much use, is it?”

  “Nope. But any direction’s a start. If we gotta take the wagon, we’re gonna zig lots more than we zag.”

  “Sometimes you make less sense than the snake.” Tsai scrambled down to the ground. “Viper will want us to keep track of all that Crayl steel.”

  Oh, yeah. She’d forgotten they had a fortune in weapons, both in steel and the ones he’d carved from magicked sea empress bone.

  Blood in the Weave. She was stuck with taking the miswoven wagon along. It would take forever to get to the kid.

  They trudged back up the fraying hill, but neither of them saw a way around the blood-woven hole. They hiked farther up the mountain. And up and up. Her feet felt like they’d just plain fall off before they got to the top.

  But finally they found a clearing where they could see a route around the thread-snipping ravine. Sort of. Lots of rocky spots the wagon might use, but lots of burnt-up trees, too. “I don’t like the look of that.”

  “Unless we go back to the coast, going due west is the only way.” Tsai pointed to a ridge on the west side of the ravine. “In a day or two, we should be able to go south.”

  Lorel nodded. “I sure don’t wanna go back the way we came.” If overgrown wiggler hadn’t given her so much crap day before yesterday, she’d’ve taken them on a more eastward pass like she planned. They could’ve avoided the miswoven hole.

  No way was she gonna let the toad chose their path again. Ever.

  Tsai tossed a pinecone down the mountainside. “Too many places the wagon can get stuck. It was bad enough getting it this far.”

  “Toad’s gonna be so mad.” There gotta be some way she could rub its nose in the delay. And in going west when it wanted to go east.

  But to the west was the burned-out area. Had the volcano caused the fire? Or something the kid did? Was hard to believe the kid had that much magic in him. Maybe he did it by accident? No, that was even worse. All that magic, and not enough control scared her.

  Didn’t matter what started the fire, though. Not as long as it didn’t start again.

  “Let’s get back.” Her feet didn’t wanna go nowhere, but they had buckets of work to do before nightfall. “We gotta forage up enough food to last us and the nags for a few days.”

  Tsai groaned, but started back down the mountain. “I hope you learned some tricks from Viper while I wasn’t looking.”

  “That was your job.” Forest closed in around her. Weaver’s cold toes, how she missed the open beach and the wild ocean. She could barely breath with all these trees lurking over her.

  “No way. My job was to catch fish. You were supposed to gather greens and stuff.”

  Lorel snorted. She hated greens almost as much as she hated rice. And Tsai’s idea of catching fish was to scoop the stranded ones off the beach. “I’ll find you a stream to grab fish outta.”

  “We both better start grabbing food or we’re going to get hungry tonight.” Tsai yanked a handful of green berries off a bush. “Think these taste good?”

  “I ain’t gonna try them.” Lorel waved one arm at the wagon far below them. “Maybe the toad will know what we can eat.”

  Tsai stopped cold and turned around to stare at her. “You think a snake will know what poisons people?”

  “Yeah, maybe not.” They’d end up eating grass, at this rate.

  Chapter 7.

  He awoke to pain, a dull, throbbing ache that the heat beneath him only partially eased. His eyes and nose were swollen shut. The fire in his chest blazed in time with his pulse. But his cozy mattress soothed the worst of his aches. He soaked in the warmth, willing it to cure his bruised body.

  The warmth of the dragon’s soft belly?

  He jolted upright. He hissed in agony, but scarcely noticed.

  He didn’t remember climbing down the cliff. He remembered wanting to, but he’d sworn he wouldn’t do it. He must be walking in his sleep.

  At least he picked a warm place to walk to, instead of out the cavern door.

  He stretched cautiously and assessed the damage from yesterday’s game. Bruised from head to foot, he felt as if he’d been tumbled in a stone polisher with a barrelful of boulders. He prodded his ribs gingerly. None seemed to be broken, though he suspected two were cracked.

  Viper staggered to his feet and searched through eyes swollen bigger than turybird eggs for a way down. Nothing forward except the way he had gone yesterday, by sliding down her shoulder. He ached at the thought of the new bruises that route would put on his tailbone.

  He couldn’t move his head; his neck was too stiff. He couldn’t bend at the waist because his ribs were on fire. He shuffled his whole body around in a circle to look for any other options.
/>   Unbelievably, one hind leg was stretched out like a bridge.

  He stared at the leg for a moment. No point in doubting his luck, he’d had too little of it lately. He crawled down the thigh with extreme care, both for the dragon’s hide and his own.

  When he reached the knee, he paused to wipe sweat off his face before it dripped on the dragon’s skin. His fingers brushed his nose. Pain flared through his nostrils, up his sinuses, into his cracked skull. He winced and bit down a yelp.

  His entire face felt swollen. More swollen than the day Lorel had punched him.

  Viper closed his eyes briefly. He had more problems with females than he cared to think about.

  He crept down the dragon’s shin to the hind foot, and slid to the sand with a muffled groan.

  Once safely on the ground, he sought an easy way up the cliff. Several minutes search convinced him that there was only one way. The hard way he had always used before. He gritted his teeth and stretched to the first handhold.

  His ribs ached until he thought he would faint from the pain. His raw hands hurt even worse, and he feared that his grip would fail. That pain let him concentrate to the exclusion of the rest of his agonized body, and that concentration helped him reach the ledge. He laid on the shelf, gasping for breath.

  Not safe yet. Keep moving.

  He summoned a will-light with one distracted thought and staggered through the tunnels, searching for the hole in the fungus bed. He found it just as he heard the dragon yawn.

  Viper doused the light. He crept into the hole and tried to still his breathing. He listened for the dragon, silently cursing the thunderous racket of his heart.

  But even silencing his heart might not be enough. What if she could hear his thoughts? Could he shield his mind?

  He’d read about a mind shield in RedAdder’s grimoire. The wizard called it a Masking Veil, and wrote something about blocking out all access to his thoughts. Maybe even hiding his magic from other wizards. Not that a dragon could be a wizard.

  She had dismissed the blood magic when it tried to form, or had seemed to. She’d ignored his illusions and dome shield the day she captured him. Would any of his magic work against her? He’d been awfully tired; he might have bungled both spells, but he doubted it. He could create illusions in his sleep. Maybe a dragon could be a wizard.

  He almost laughed. He wasn’t a wizard, only an untrained sorcerer. But he might have enough education to pull off a Masking Veil. He’d find out the hard way if his magic worked against a dragon.

  What did that spell need? It didn’t mention ingredients, praise the Thunderer, and didn’t allude to chants. He was supposed to reflect the minds and places around him.

  No way would he try to think like a dragon. He wasn’t that stupid or that desperate. But he could attempt the second part and reflect his surroundings.

  Darkness. Gray fungus. Cold, cold rock. And pain.

  No, he had to ignore the pain. Had to push it completely out of his awareness. Had to refuse to feel the searing cold. Keep it simple.

  He was darkness. He was rock.

  Darkness. Rock. He chanted the words inside his mind until they ceased to be words. Ceased to be things. They just were. And were all his existence. Darkness. Rock.

  The scrape of Leysamura’s claws as she thrust her hands through the tunnels became a part of him, too.

  At first she hummed, but soon the crooning stopped. Her motions became hurried, even frantic.

  Several times her claws slid directly over the fungus bed. Her fingers prodded the top edges, but they missed the hole time after time.

  Viper held his breath each time her hand groped above him, but forced himself back into the chant. Darkness. Rock.

  Over and over the spell broke. He strained to chant the words again. Sweat soaked his clothing before she moved on to search a different set of tunnels.

  Finally the sound of claws grating on rock ended.

  “He’s gone!” Leysamura’s shrieks echoed through the caverns. Oddly, her voice sounded more pleased than angry. “How dare he? By the seven lonely moons, I’ll search every inch of this mountain. I’ll find you, Adoriel child, do you hear me? He can’t get very far, he can’t yet fly. But I can!”

  Viper heard the dragon’s wings whoosh as they caught the updraft outside the entryway, and heard several strong wing beats.

  The cavern became silent but for the beating of a tiny, frightened heart. His heart. He’d never felt so small in his life.

  How long would she be gone? Long enough for him to escape? There must be some way out of the cavern. Besides a hole in a sheer cliff. But he’d climb down that if he had to.

  He’d prefer to heal up a bit, first. To do that, he had to stay out of her reach. Praise the Thunderer his ragged spell worked well enough to hide him. But it would only work if she couldn’t see him.

  Time to look for a way out of this mess.

  He crawled out of the fungus and crept through the darkness back to the main cavern, not daring to summon a will-light in case she noticed his magic. He didn’t mind darkness. He was darkness.

  But he wasn’t rock. He hurt too much to be rock. And rock was too cold. If only he could get warm, maybe his muscles would loosen up.

  Stiff as he was, he’d find a way out of this sandblasted cavern. And once he got out–

  How would he ever find Lorel? Was she looking for him? Or would the Kyridon convince her to head east and continue its quest? The magical weapons needed a wizard to meld them with their yet-to-be-found owners before they could be used against the Mindbender. The quest was paramount for the serpent. It might have deserted him.

  Lorel would never abandon him, but she’d never guess he’d survived a dragon attack. She wouldn’t even know to look for him.

  It didn’t matter. Once he got away, he’d head for Noran. He’d follow her. Or follow the rumors of the wagon’s progress. Any vehicle covered with bright blue starfish would catch everyone’s attention.

  Dizziness struck again. He staggered to the nearest wall and leaned against the rock. Was he bleeding inside? Or could it be altitude sickness? He’d read about altitude sickness, but hadn’t believed a word of it. But this mountain was certainly tall enough to make the air uncomfortably thin.

  Everything around him was uncomfortable. That wasn’t going to stop him. He’d explore every inch of this cavern. He’d find a way out.

  And if there wasn’t one, he’d create one.

  Chapter 8.

  Walking felt so good, she almost forgot why she was hiking through a forest in the middle of nowhere.

  Lorel paused and glanced back along the tree-crowded path. Still easy going for the wagon. Or easy enough. Might scrape off a few more starfish, but she swore the fraying things grew back.

  It was only a couple of hours after sunrise, and she felt strong enough to hike for another few hours. Still, she oughta head back soon and meet up with Tsai. The girl might’ve found a better path.

  But she was so relieved to leave the wagon – and the toad – behind for a while. She was tempted to keep going, to not go back for them, but she’d promised.

  No matter what it cost her, she always kept her promises. But blood in the Weave, she was tempted. The wagon and the horses – and the toad – were such blood-woven vermin. Worse than lice. And she was supposed to take care of them when she wanted to squash the lot of them.

  How on the Shuttle did the kid get them through the mountains to Land’s End? He never once backtracked. She hardly ever went scouting for a path, and never very far. He always just knew.

  It sure weren’t the toad telling him where to go. The legless lizard didn’t understand how hard it was to move the wagon up and down the hills. She wasn’t even sure it understood what a road was.

  Of course, since it ain’t got no legs, a road might be more trouble than not.

  Fraying toad.

  She’d walk a little farther, just to make sure this was a good trail. No way she’d risk leading them
to a ravine. The toad’d never let her hear the end of it.

  Up and up and up. Nice wide path, not too many boulders. Boring boring boring. The horses would make it up this slope, no problem. She’d just need to move a few rocks.

  She reached the top of the ridge and sat down to catch her breath.

  To her right, seven thousand miles away, was a volcano that smoked and sulked like the toad did before she left this morning.

  The ocean sloshed to the north, and to the west, too. And a nice slow slope led down to the western shore, probably right to the sea empresses’ graveyard, where they’d carved the weapons.

  Noran was east, somewhere. About a thousand miles away, if she remembered right. The kid said it would take more than a lunar to get there.

  Would be taking a lot longer, now.

  She shaded her eyes and stared southeast. The toad said the kid was that way, and high up. He couldn’t be on one of the volcanoes, so he’d be on a real mountain.

  There was only one real mountain in sight, a long way past the smoky volcano. A thread-snipping big real mountain.

  Them nags were gonna hate her innards before they got there.

  Still, it didn’t look too bad. Lots of long, rolling foothills, like the kid found on the way to Land’s End. Once they got past the burned spots, there was lots of scraggly forest, so plenty of game. Lots of grassy spots.

  She’d need to plan her campsites around the grass, like the kid always did. The horses were gonna need lots to eat to get through them mountains. Looked like she’d be doing as much camping as traveling.

  Good. She’d leave the nags with the toad and go hunting. And scouting.

  Time to head back. She’d join up with Tsai, compare routes, and go get the blood-woven wagon.

  ∞∞∞

  By that afternoon, her butt hurt from sitting still so long on the bouncy driver’s seat. No wonder the kid begged for a cushion when they first got the overgrown wheelbarrow. Tsai’d put springs on the fraying thing, but they just made her bum prance around like a Nashidran soldier on parade.