“It’s pulling us in, Tournak!” Saxthor said.
“The Vortex Virax,” the wizard said, “Memlatec created this guardian device as well.”
“Huh, nothing gets through to the island,” Bodrin said.
“This middle shield removes anything approaching Helshia. Should anyone be foolish enough to disregard the fish’s warning, or get past it, Memlatec anchored the Vortex Virax to the seafloor to activate on their approach. The phenomenon will suck any boat straight to the bottom if imprudent adventurers defy the challenge.”
Saxthor scrambled to the bow rotating starboard. “Do something.”
The vessel’s wood creaked under the sucking current’s strain. The drift accelerated. Water washed over the side as the boat veered more toward the spinning water.
“Can we escape the pull?” Bodrin asked.
Tournak chuckled and threw his amulet into the vortex. Silver rays shot through the blue-green water. The sea calmed and smoothed out. The fishing boat sailed on and vanished in the Veil of Helshian Mists.
* * *
Once they passed the veil, the boat cruised on a placid, sunny sea straight for the isle of Helshia, visible for the first time. The stress of the voyage was behind them. Soon, the deep ocean’s blue-green spanning the channel between Helshia and Tixos gave way to lighter green, transitioning to aqua in the warm shallows. Porpoises raced along beside them as if playmates.
Graceful sea turtles flew through the marine world on flipper wings. The turtles would coast to a halt and turn down to graze on lush algae beds growing on the island’s fertile lava rock or on occasional undulating jellyfish.
Close to the shore, the seawater was crystal-clear. Searching for the mollusks hidden below, starfish speckled the lava sands. Crabs darted to rocky hideouts under schools of jewel-colored fish zipping back and forth beneath the boat. The richness of life forms in the tepid waters surrounding Helshia was exceptional. The fertile, somewhat recent lava rock grew luxurious kelp beds, the basis of an overabundant food chain. No one had ever fished these waters.
Bodrin steered the boat onto the pristine seashore with glistening black volcanic sand. Cautious of potentially sharp rocks, the three sailors gingerly tested the shore for stability and razor-shelled oyster beds.
The beach was a paradise. A stream spilled down from the two silent volcanoes with clear, freshwater. The flow fanned out, merging into the saltwater at the cove where they landed. Rich plant life formed a canopy over the creek. Trees, palms, and vines hung with tropical fruits. Goats scampered in small groups across a grassy plain between the high tide line and the higher land, where trees stretched out their windswept branches. Brilliantly colored tropical birds chattered in the trees between flights to feast on the succulent fruits. Abundant food and water were everywhere on Helshia. Memlatec had outdone himself in bringing this refuge into being.
Tournak and the boys began to explore the island’s interior. Below the rocky volcanic slopes, a rich plain suitable for crops spread out, linking the two mountains. Forests offered timber for building. Easily worked lava rock made a more permanent shelter possible. All they needed were tools, and they’d brought those on the fishing boat, along with vegetable seeds in a chest, stowed in the cabin.
After resting for two days and exploring for a week, the refugees started building the lodging that was to last them for seven years.
* * *
Memlatec told Queen Eleatsubetsvyertsin the boys had been lost while out on the adventure with Tournak. The queen’s sorrow had to be genuine, or the perceptive witch would sense the deception. Saxthor’s life was at stake; the queen must not know the truth. Her grief broke his heart, but Earwig also knew of the adventure with Tournak. A credible story the insidious witch might believe was mandatory.
Earwig, ever fanatical in her vengeful hatred and aspirations for a crown, kept her spies searching for the lost boys on Tixos. She never received word of their departure from the last watcher. Even in her conjuring and with divining crystals, she wasn’t able to discover Saxthor was alive. The Veil of Helshian Mist absorbed her energy probes and blocked her attempts to locate the perceived potential threat.
For the sorceress, the happy accident removing the second claimant to the throne was a relief. She kept the queen under surveillance for any sign the story might be a ruse. The witch turned her attention to defaming the queen and debasing the self-indulgent crown prince. He would alienate their subjects beyond tolerance. If the insufferable behavior continued, Earwig hoped she might buy support and encourage a revolt when the boy ascended the throne. The restoration of her subservient husband was her incessant goal, after all. She would again be queen, she fantasized. The hopeless prospect delighted her. She never faced the fact the people hated her even more than they disliked the egocentric crown prince.
As time passed and no trace of the boys surfaced, the queen ended her search. With reluctance, she accepted the loss of her second son, although she never gave up hope.
* * *
All went according to Memlatec’s plan until a simple mishap in Dreaddrac cracked and drowned the king’s timetable.
14: Mishap in Dreaddrac
No sooner had Tournak and the boys escaped from Olnak than Memlatec began to sense the growing power in Dreaddrac was reaching a dangerous level. In the Wizard’s Tower workroom, Memlatec read the energy fluxes across the peninsula through a divining crystal. Strange new pulses arose from the north, confirming the wizard’s suspicions. Saxthor’s power grew in response to the Dark Lord’s increasing strength. Memlatec’s alarm intensified until a knock at the door shattered the trance.
“Who is it?”
The door opened, pushed by a food tray, and potbellied Aleman in his dingy apron. His tangled frizz of thin gray hair was like the intrusion.
“You needn’t bring refreshments all the way up here Aleman, just call me, and I’ll come down.”
“You deaf old fool, I did call you, I called you many times.”
“I’m sorry; I was absorbed in my work and didn’t hear you.”
Aleman still wheezed from the climb up the tower. “What you got there? Must be some special gizmo, you rubbing the thing like a dog’s head and all.”
“This is a reflection orb. It displays the planetary energy flows through the gradients as well as unusual pulses where they’re not supposed to be.”
Aleman cocked his befuddled head at Memlatec. He puffed up, frowned, and studied the sorcerer for a moment. Understanding never came. Shaking his head, the potbellied housekeeper cleared his throat and put down the tray.
“Uh-huh, that’s nice.” The old man started to shuffle papers on the worktable.
“Thank you for the food, but as I’ve told you many times, you needn’t straighten up in here.”
Aleman ignored the wizard. He tidied a few more papers before Memlatec tapped his hand with a wand. Aleman looked up at him frowning.
“Don’t go getting cranky, you old coot.” Aleman scanned the room, scratching his shaking head. “This place needs a good cleaning.”
“Yes, Aleman, but I’ll get to it when I have time. You mustn’t clean up in here. You misplace things. It takes me forever to find them.”
“Uh-huh.” The wizard wasted the admonition on the feisty housekeeper. Shuffling around the workroom, Aleman visually probed everything, which made Memlatec uncomfortable. Seeming to appear disinterested, Aleman glanced back to his employer. “Something’s got you worried.”
“How perceptive of you.”
“Now don’t go getting all riled up, I was just trying to help. I’m here if you need me, just ask. Course I’m no wizard. I can’t be changing people into bugs and stuff, but I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you for your offer, but I don’t need assistance at the moment. Thank you for lunch, Aleman.”
The old retainer sauntered over to the defensive wizard, crossed his arms, and stared at him. “Tell old Aleman what’s got you so wound up.”
“You don’t take a hint, do you?”
“Never saw the need. You going to let me in on what’s bothering you, or must I camp out in this dust bin.”
Memlatec shook his head. The annoyance wasn’t going to leave until Memlatec shared what was troubling him. The old man wasn’t the best housekeeper, but he was a good enough cook. Still, the wizard could rely on him to keep a sharp eye on the tower and be invaluable company with locked lips to prying busybodies.
“The Dark Lord, king of Dreaddrac, has grown an army in the Ice Mountains. His strength shows up strong on the power grid. I fear he’ll soon invade the kingdoms of the peninsula again, and I’ve no indication the rulers are aware of the danger.”
“Does this have anything to do with the power stuff growing in Prince Saxthor?”
“The two are opposite halves of the whole.”
“Can’t be good.”
“No, Aleman, not good.”
“The prince, rest his soul, was too young to be fighting anyone, let alone an evil king. It grieves me we lost him.”
“Prince Saxthor isn’t dead, yet, but you mustn’t reveal that to a living soul. Should Earwig get an inkling he’s alive, she’d double her effort to find and kill him.”
“The prince alive!”
“Yes, but no more mention of it. Even the queen doesn’t know.”
“My lips is sealed.”
“Saxthor is safe for the time being. He must survive and grow up to achieve his potential to confront the Dark Lord successfully. I fear the king will unleash his army before the boy develops his power to full capacity. Dreaddrac’s forces could slip between the Edros Swamp and the Hador Mountains. They’d overrun Heggolstockin before word even reached the King Grekenbach at Graushdemheimer.”
The thought seemed to shock Aleman. He knocked over a water goblet and flooded the tabletop.
“Never did hear anything good about Dreaddrac. I bet the witch has something to do with all this. She’s a bad lot.”
Memlatec considered the water shimming on the table before Aleman cleaned up the mess. “Flood… witch…Yes, you’re a genius, Aleman.”
Aleman looked up, his head askew with a suspicious eye cocked at the wizard. “Don’t you go making fun of me.”
Memlatec rushed to a wall cabinet and pulled out a map of the peninsula. He rolled out the parchment on the clean tabletop, putting implements on the corners. His long-nailed index finger pointed to a spot on the map between the Edros Swamps and the Hador mountains.
“What did I say?” Aleman asked.
Aleman scratched his head, puzzled by the wizard, who cast him a grin as he darted to a bookcase. Memlatec returned with a dusty book and flipped through the pages.
“Witch, you said witch, and flood,” Memlatec said without looking up from his search.
“Witch? Flood?” Aleman’s face was as blank as the mind behind it.
“Witch,” Memlatec said. He looked up at Aleman, his finger pointing to a name on the page. “The Witch Zelda.”
“I never heard of her.”
“No, long ago, she fought with an older and wiser wizard…Zelda lost. She ran off and sought protection under Dreaddrac’s king. She’s been living on the edge of the Edros Swamps since.”
“How’s a witch able to help you if I can’t?” Aleman wiped a spot of water off the table near the book. “Don’t you go getting mixed up with no witch.”
“She’s going to flood western Dreaddrac and close the only way open an army can pass out of Dreaddrac. The plan won’t stop the Dark Lord, but if all goes as anticipated, the resulting inland sea will delay him long enough for Saxthor to mature into his powers.”
“An old bumbling witch flood such a big place? Don’t sound like she could. Why would she do that for you?”
Memlatec took a book from a shelf behind the worktable and sat down to search through the pages for a suitable incantation. The wizard was engaged in his plot. Aleman nudged the tray closer to him on the table.
“Better you should eat your lunch and not get in another muddle.”
“Later, Aleman, I’ll eat something later. I must find a particular spell now. A dangerous incantation and a real risk for sure, but if my plan works, it’ll be just the thing.”
Aleman shook his head and wiped his hands on his apron. He stuffed his ever-present dust rag in the apron pocket and shuffled out the door, leaving Memlatec to his obsession. When the old man returned at dusk to retrieve the tray, Memlatec was finishing up. He’d scribbled down the spell on an old piece of parchment, singed the edges and aged it with charcoal smudges.
“Why you dirtying up a clean bit of paper?”
“A spell.”
“I turn my back, and you’re making another mess.”
Memlatec didn’t respond. Aleman approached the worktable and began wiping all around Memlatec and the parchment until the wizard knocked his hand away.
“You’re being a pest, Aleman.”
“What’re you writing now? If I’m the genius who gave you the idea, you ought to tell me what we’re doing.”
“We’re not doing anything. I’m fixing this spell scroll for the old Witch Zelda. I’ll have one of my watcher birds take this to her. She’s dense, and if I know her curiosity, she’ll have to try out the spell. The ground beneath the Edros Swamps isn’t stable. If this incantation works, extremely violent shaking underground will cause the land to settle. The Akkin River will flow backward and flood the surrounding area, closing off the passage between the swamp and the mountains. The king has neither vessels nor timber to make them, so he’ll be cut off.”
“You can’t do such a thing, can you? Make that big a disaster?” Aleman straightened up and stepped back. “Well, of course you could, you’re quite the best at making a mess.”
Memlatec ignored the comment and detected Aleman frowning when his ribbing didn’t get the desired response. The magician chuckled, having further frustrated Aleman.
“This spell can when cast on unstable ground.”
“Yes, looking around this room, I can believe you can make a big mess.”
Memlatec frowned, and Aleman left the workroom with dishes clanking on the tray. The sorcerer soon sent the device off with a hawk he hoped would draw less attention in Dreaddrac than Fedra or his great horned owl.
* * *
The raptor found Zelda as she scratched out subsistence at the edge of the Edros Swamps. Nestling the scroll in a bush near her hut, he observed from a dead tree. The witch found the document and wiped her muddy fingers on her sleeve. She read the contents then frowned, fingering the torn upper edge that should have had displayed the spell’s name.
“Where’d this come from?” Zelda said, mumbling to herself. She looked around but saw no one to the horizon. “A page of an old magician’s book, I wonder what this one does?”
The witch stuck the parchment in her tattered pocket and continued to cut scraggly weeds for seasoning the rat she’d killed for her meal. The spell stayed on her mind, and after cooking the stringy rodent, she took the dingy spell out of her pocket.
“What harm can one little chant do?” Zelda wiped back the dusty, wiry hair from her face and reread the spell. “I’ll just recite this once and find out what happens.”
She cast the spell, and at first, nothing happened. She stuffed the scroll back in her pocket. Then from deep in the earth, she felt the ground quiver. The shaking stopped. She stood up, but a massive jolt jarred her off her feet. Knocked backward, she sat up in the mud, legs apart, and scanned the dead-silent swamp.
“What have I done?”
The ground around her trembled, shuddered, and began to sink. Dead trees toppled over amid shaking scrub brush. Massive ripples formed in the swamp water and grew to waves. The earth sank more. The foul water’s leading-edge appeared to stream toward Zelda. She grunted, struggling to stand up on the shaking soil. When she glanced again at the swamp, the water first withdrew then surged in waves toward her, lapping at the tattered hem of her
skirt. She ran, but the waves overtook her. Fingered lightning bolts crackled the gloomy swirling sky. The whole swamp jostled across the horizon. The fetid water was soon knee-deep and rippling with bobbing debris. Zelda choked on the swamp stench as she struggled to overcome her tugging skirt and boots stuck and sinking in the mud. A dead tree, whose rotted branch stubs spiked at the sky, was her lone refuge. The witch clutched the crumbling black-bark trunk. A surging wave plucked them up and hurled them along. She surfed east with the tsunami wave until it slammed into the Hador mountains.
Zelda went into hiding, but Dreaddrac’s king sent minions all across southwestern Dreaddrac to find the source of the power surge that triggered the devastation. Two bounty-hunter ogres eventually found wretched Zelda cringing in a damp cave.
“It’s that witch, Zelda. T’was her sure.”
Zelda backed up. “I didn’t do nothing.”
The grinning ogres looked at each other, snatched struggling Zelda, tying her hands and feet.
“Let me go!”
“Shut up. You’re taking a little trip with us.” The captors tied her down over a horned nark’s back and started back northeast to the Ice Mountains.
“Where’re you taking me?” Zelda asked between grunts from the rhythmic jolts.
“Where you won’ts be coming back from, Old Witch.”
Zelda glared at the grinning ogres, who stuffed a rag in her mouth and secured it to shut her up.
* *
In the Ice Mountains at the northern tip of the Powterosian peninsula, heat and steam rose from deep underground. Magma seeped up through fissures deep in the Munattahensenhov’s icy mantle. The Munattahensenhov was the mountain fortress where the Dark Lord grew his orc, ogre, and troll armies in a labyrinth of catacombs. In the bowels of the mountain, the Dark Lord of Dreaddrac sat fuming on his throne in the subterranean audience hall. His sinister courtiers stood before the king with the only ambassador, that of Prertsten, his sole ally. Facing the Dark Lord was a penitent and cringing Witch Zelda. Old and haggard, she fidgeted on the cold granite floor before the dais and the enraged Dark Lord’s sparking glare.
The Neuyokkasinian Arc of Empire Series: Books 1-3 Box Set High, Epic Fantasy on a Grand Dragon Scale! Kindle Edition Page 22