Senta stepped gingerly toward the men. Neither moved. Both had faces caked with dried blood and wore torn and tattered shirts covered in blood. She bent down to see if she could recognize either face, but they were both too badly swollen and torn. Standing directly in front of one of the two men, she reached around her own neck and lifted one of three silver necklaces over her head. Each necklace had a pendant representing the shape of a bird. She carefully draped it over the man’s head. He didn’t move. She stepped quietly over to the second man and slipped the second of the three necklaces from around her head and started to place it over his. He moaned and turned his head slightly, startling her, and she dropped the necklace to the stone floor. When she reached down to pick it up, she found the stones almost carpeted with layer upon layer of dried blood. She stared at the brown surface for a moment, and then noticed another change in the room.
The square formed in the center of the room by the light streaming into the temple doorway had changed. There was a shadow in it. Senta stood up and looked at the doorway. Framed in the brightness was a lizardman. He was not as frightening to the girl as the other lizzies she had encountered, though she was still frightened that she would be seen and captured. This lizardman was shrunken and shriveled, and its skin had faded away to a dull grey. It wore a necklace of human hands, and it carried a small lizard attached to a stick. Keeping one eye on the creepy reptile, she slipped the necklace over the second man’s head. This time he didn’t move.
The shriveled lizardman began to shake the lizard on the stick. It rattled as though it was a dried gourd. The lizardman began to hiss. Senta could feel magic in the air around her. She could see it swirling like a purple mist.
“Your magic’s not as strong as ours,” she said.
The old reptile stopped. He stared into the room for another moment. Then he started shaking the lizard and hissing again. Senta looked down at herself. Though invisible, she had been able to see herself, and of course she still could. But something seemed different about her. The grotesque lizardman suddenly hissed loudly and looking up, Senta saw that it was pointing right at her. She was visible.
She grabbed the bird talisman on her necklace and shouted. “Now Zurfina! Now!”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the room around Senta began to shimmer as though it were being seen through the curtain of a waterfall. Finally the room, the lizardman, and everything else vanished.
* * * * *
From the great field of waist-high grass, the party of colonists looked up at the massive walled city on the hill in open astonishment. Outside of half a dozen human cities, capital cities, there was nothing like this in the world. Or was there? Maybe there were dozens of cities, or even hundreds, beyond the reach of human eyes, in regions of the world waiting for civilization to discover them.
Compared to the force of soldiers that had fought and died on this same savannah twelve days before, this current group of human visitors would have seemed much less threatening. Twelve men and three women dressed in khaki jungle clothes and a woman in black. They had journeyed six days through the forest, following a trail of bloated and disgusting, decomposing lizzie bodies. There had been hundreds of them. Unwary predators had eaten a few, but then the predators had experienced the same grotesque eruptions of pestilence that had killed the lizardmen. The trail of bodies had stopped two days before, but the fifteen humans had well-described directions to guide them.
“Do they know we’re here?” asked Iolanthe Dechantagne.
“I’m sure by now they do,” said Zurfina. “They’re going to be a lot more cautious now. The king must have learned that he lost two thousand men.”
“That’s not much of a loss, relatively speaking,” said Zeah Korlann. “That city is nearly as big as Brech. They must have ten thousand warriors. I’d love to walk around and look at it, under other circumstances.”
The air in front of the group shimmered and out of nowhere, three people appeared in the grass. Two horribly brutalized men, the ropes that had held them in an upright position now falling limply beside them, plopped over onto their faces. The young girl dressed in black, stood in front of them and clutched her necklace pendant.
“That was so scary,” she said.
Iolanthe, Dr. Kelloran, and Sister Auni rushed forward to the two men on the ground.
“Kafira Kristos,” said Dr. Kelloran, “They’ve been blinded.”
“Terrence,” said Iolanthe, cupping her brother’s face in her hands. “Terrence, can you say something?”
“Iolanthe,” he croaked.
Iolanthe looked at his battered face and his destroyed eyes, and then stepped away to throw up in the grass. Wiping her mouth, she looked toward the other man being examined by Sister Auni.
“Augie?” she asked.
“It’s Corporal Bratihn,” said the Acolyte.
While Dr. Kelloran opened the lid of a small brown bottle and carefully poured some of the liquid inside into Terrence’s mouth, Sister Auni drew a cross upon Corporal Bratihn’s forehead and began reciting a cure wounds spell. Iolanthe stood up and walked over to where Zurfina stood.
“I can feel their witch-doctor scrying us right now,” said the sorceress.
“Good. I want them to know who it was.”
“Does that mean you want survivors?”
“You said that there were always a few.”
Zurfina shrugged.
“Do it now,” Iolanthe ordered.
Just as she had done six days ago, on at the narrow knuckle in the finger of land extending into the sea north of the colony, Zurfina plucked the air near her face, as though she was playing an invisible harp. Only Senta could see that she was picking from the air the little gems which floated around her head.
“The purple one?” Senta wondered.
Zurfina winked at her. Then she squared her feet, straightened her shoulders, rolled her head around as if loosening the tension from her neck. She raised both hands high into the air, wide, and with palms up. Just as it had on that day on the peninsula, her voice carried a gravity that seemed to reverberate on the air.
“Uastium peregorum uuthanum destus trejur beithbechnoth err eetarri.” No sooner had she stopped speaking than her body became completely limp and she fell to the ground. Zeah rushed to her and lifted her head. Her eyes were open but they had gone completely steel grey, as if they had been replaced with hematite gemstones.
“Get the stretchers ready,” ordered Iolanthe.
“We’ve only got two,” said one of the men unpacking the folded assembly of wood and canvas from a backpack.
“She’ll be all right,” said Iolanthe.
“Ooh, pretty,” said Senta, raising a hand and pointing up at the sky.
A cascade of shooting stars was falling across the sky from southeast to northwest. They left long trails of glowing stardust as they shot across the atmosphere. More and more of them appeared.
“It would be prettier at night,” said Zurfina, being helped by Zeah to her feet, her eyes now returned to normal.
“Should we be concerned?” asked Iolanthe.
“We should be fine here,” said the sorceress.
The land all around suddenly became much brighter, as if the sun had somehow been doubled. From high in the sky, a massive and beautiful shining meteor flew across the heavens leaving an awesome trail of smoke and cinders behind it. A huge ‘boom’ shook the land as the glittering jewel shot toward the lizard city.
“We should be fine here… I think,” said Zurfina.
“Get them on the stretchers,” ordered Iolanthe. “We need to go.”
Terrence and Corporal Bratihn were each loaded aboard a stretcher. Both had now received a mouthful of healing draught from the doctor and a spell from Sister Auni. Four men lifted each of the stretchers.
The giant, gleaming bright falling star slammed into the city on the hill, erupting in a brilliant flash, and causing a huge mushroom-shaped cloud to rise high up into the sky. The men
and women on the savannah could see a shockwave flowing down the hill and across the land toward them.
“Come on!” shouted Iolanthe, and the entire company began running toward the line of trees three miles to the southeast.
Though they moved as fast as they could, the shockwave overtook them long before they reached the trees. It was as if a great wave spread across the land, less like the wave in an ocean than like a flag blown by the wind. When it overtook them, they were tossed into the air and deposited back down in a heap. Standing back up, Iolanthe looked to see that there was nothing left of the hill upon which the lizardman city had sat. In its place was one great fiery conflagration. Molten pieces of the earth, thrown up in the blast were dropping across the landscape for miles around. Wildfires were spreading through the grass. A huge rolling cloud of smoke and dirt was moving toward them with the speed of a railroad train.
“Come on,” she repeated, and scooping up their charges once again, they made for the trees.
“Everybody grab hold of somebody else,” she said, and she grabbed the edge of the stretcher on which her brother lay, still unconscious and grievously wounded.
They were still a short distance from the trees, when the billowing veil overtook them and immersed them in a sea of brown air. It was impossible to see and difficult to breathe, but they continued forward. They reached the edge of the forest without even knowing it, because they passed between the first trees unnoticed. As they moved deeper and deeper between the giant redwoods and thick maples, the air began to clear. Finally they stopped.
Iolanthe looked at the members of her party. They were all covered with dirt, and trails of mud ran down from their eyes, nose, and mouth. Terrence and Corporal Bratihn were both still safely on their stretchers. Sister Auni and Dr. Kelloran both checked on them. The eight men who carried them were there as well. Zurfina and her ward were plopped down beside the base of a huge tree, both so covered in dirt that it was impossible to tell that they were wearing clothing any different in color from anyone else. One more soldier was on hands and knees spitting mud from his mouth. She counted the party members—two, four, seven, fifteen.
“Blast,” she muttered. Zeah and three other men were missing.
* * * * *
Terrence slowly became aware that he was awake. The first thing he noticed was grit between his teeth, and he tasted dirt on his lips. He realized that the pain in his arm and his back and his face was no longer as bad as it had been. His arms and legs felt stiff, but even as this knowledge came to him, he realized he was on a cot of some kind. Someone carefully lifted his head and began wrapping a bandage around it. He reached up with his left hand and grabbed the human hand with the bandage.
“Who is it? Who’s there?” he said, with a choking voice.
“It’s Padgett, Padget Kelloran.”
“Oh.”
“Have a drink,” she said, putting a canteen to his lips and pouring in a small amount of water. Then she used her fingers to wipe the dirt and mud from around his mouth.
“More,” he said.
She gave him another sip.
“Terrence?” It was a new voice. It was so tender that it took him a moment to realize that it was his sister.
“Iolanthe?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re on our way home. We just rescued you.”
“Am I going to live?”
“Yes, dear. Dr. Kelloran says that both you and Corporal Bratihn are going to recover.”
“Bratihn? Alive?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think there was anybody else. Augie…”
“I know. He’s dead.”
“He was brave,” said Terrence.
“Of course he was.”
“Are they following us? Don’t let them catch you. They would rather have you than me, I think.”
“They aren’t going to be following or catching anyone. I promise you.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Kelloran, now finishing up the bandage around his head.
“My eyes?”
Dr. Kelloran paused for a moment.
“They’re gone.”
“Don’t worry,” said Iolanthe. “It’s a single restoration spell. We’ll have Zurfina do it as soon as she’s rested.”
“Do you think she can?”
“Well I had my doubts up until a week ago, but yes. I’m sure she can do it.”
“Okay. Bratihn? How is he?”
“Pretty much the same as you,” said Dr. Kelloran. “His arms aren’t as badly swollen, but his eyes...”
“Him too, Iolanthe.”
“Of course.” His sister’s voice was still tender. “Rest now.”
He knew that it wasn’t her order to rest that made him drift off into unconsciousness, but it seemed as though it was. As he drifted off, he could hear her issuing more orders.
“Get them ready to travel. I want to get further into the woods before nightfall. You take point. Keep an eye out for the others.
* * * * *
Zeah woke with a start. He felt his head. There was a large goose egg on his right temple. He thought back for a moment to reconstruct what had happened. He was running. He couldn’t see because of the dust. He had tripped. Well, that was that. He spat, something that did not come naturally to him, but his mouth was coated with mud. He looked around. He was in the middle of a forest. The ground was rocky. And all around him, all he could see were large trees.
He stood up, supporting himself with a hand on the trunk of a tremendously large redwood. He wondered if he should call out for help. It was possible that the other members of the party were relatively close. Then again, there might be lizardmen relatively close too, and they probably would not be inclined to offer him any form of aid, since he had been present when their city had been wiped off the face of Birmisia. He knew the direction that he needed to go was northwest. He would walk that direction, and if after a while it seemed prudent, he would start calling out to see if he could locate the others.
Taking a quick observation of the sun, Zeah started off, the land sloping gently down as he walked. He was in the middle of the flock of creatures before he even realized they were there. He didn’t know if these were birds or dinosaurs. They had feathers. It didn’t make a great deal of difference to him. He had grown wary of the large birds, like the velociraptors, which roamed the ground in this new world. A quick look at these however revealed that they did not have the long jaws of the velociraptors or the razor sharp teeth. They had short beak-like mouths. Other than that they were very much like the creatures that had almost eaten Zurfina’s apprentice on their first day in this land. They were about the same size, two feet tall and three feet long from nose to end of tail. They had downy soft feathers covering their bodies, and tufts of longer colorful feathers on their forearms and at the ends of their tails. There were dozens of them, and they watched Zeah with big round eyes as he walked between them.
Zeah thought that he had completely passed through the flock of creatures, when he noticed a group of four more. It took him a second to realize that these four were running. They weren’t running at him and they weren’t running away from him. But they were running away from something. A group of five predators was following the running birds. They were not huge beasts like the tyrannosaurus, but they looked plenty big to Zeah. Six to seven feet tall, they were almost twenty feet long, with a bony ridge running down their back and a horn on their snout. They ran along, hopping over logs and rocks with a grace belying their crocodilian appearances. Zeah turned and ran too.
He knew with absolute certitude that the pack of predators would forgo chasing the creatures they had been chasing, and would go after him instead. For one thing, he was a nice, soft, juicy animal. For another, he would be much easier to catch. Finally, it was just the way his luck ran. He chanced a glance back over his shoulder, and sure enough, the entire pack was right behind him.
It would be only a second or two before they leapt upon him and began ripping his flesh to pieces.
A huge bump shook the land and bounced both of Zeah’s feet into the air. When he came back down, he thought that he would be able to keep his balance and continue running, but one of his feet slid and he crashed down into a small redwood sapling. Rolling over onto his back, he looked behind him. The predatory dinosaurs, all of them, lay broken and crushed in a pile. As Zeah sat watching opened-mouthed, an impossibly huge claw reached down from the sky and picked up one of the dead beasts.
The appendage was obviously that of a reptile, though it was less like the stubby pawed claws of alligators, lizardmen, and the dinosaurs that had been chasing him, and was more like the hand of a man, though the fingers were slightly webbed and they had claws rather than nails. The hand was more than four feet across the palm with three fingers and an opposable thumb. Tiny metallic scales tinged with deep forest green began just behind the claws and were intricately meshed together like a suit of ancient chain mail. Zeah followed the scales with his eyes, up the long arms, past a gigantic shoulder, and up a long sinewy neck to a massive head more than twelve feet long hanging forty feet off the ground. Atop the head was a long spiny crest, and hanging down around the face were long whiskers. Unlike the dinosaurs, and even the lizardmen here in Birmisia, the eyes of this gigantic reptile were lively with intelligence. It was a dragon, a monstrous dragon. Being only the second dragon that Zeah had ever seen, he naturally compared it to the first. It was similar to Zurfina’s steel dragon, in the way that a triceratops is similar to a horned toad.
The Voyage of the Minotaur Page 31