by Dan Allen
“Who is rowing down there?” Eastwick hollered. “It’s like a legion of monsters!”
“It’s my Furendali—the northerners!” Toran called back over the roar of a wave that crashed over the ship’s bow. “And I’m going to join them—Nehal, you too.”
The boy, dangling in midair under Toran’s arm, had no choice.
“We may actually survive this storm if they can keep that up for another twenty-four hours . . . maybe . . . then what? Dungeons, we just lost the fleet! The entire fleet.”
Toran turned and set his stony blue eyes on the captain. “There is more to this world than battles and blood. It is something we can only do together and it cannot be stopped by traitors.”
Sea spray eclipsed the captain and Toran hardened his grip on the ladder rail, squeezing Nehal hard enough to get a shriek out of him.
Eastwick’s face appeared through the sheet of white water. “What are you talking about?”
“One point of the compass at a time, Eastwick. Go south.”
Turning point indeed, Toran thought. His heart bled for the thousands dying in the harbor. His body shook with grief as he climbed down the ladder to the cannon deck, then descended another to the oar deck. Beneath the grief was rage, the righteous indignation of a betrayed king.
Those traitors of Ruban who sold out their own Serbani brothers and the pirates of Hersa who ceaselessly raided the coast—they would both pay. The peaceful Serbani had never dared to attack the Hersian homeland before. That was about to change.
Fate would recompense their due, and Toran would help it along.
The war had reached the turning point. Tira had won the battle, but the fate of the Serbani nation would not be turned, not by her.
The fate of the Serban traveled with Toran.
Nehal, the third heir, had survived. So would the Serban realm.
On his feet again on the slave deck, the cabin boy looked up at Toran. “What are you going to do, sir? We can’t fight their fleet. You only have one ship.”
“Yes,” Toran said as the ship pitched violently.
The sea-worthy cabin boy checked himself easily with his arm linked through the ladder by the crook of his elbow. “You aren’t worried? You aren’t afraid?”
Toran shook his head. “No.” He smiled at Nehal. “I have everything I need. It’s time to end this war. We sail for Hersa.”
Chapter 8
Montazi Realm. Neutat.
Less than a week before the challenge where he would go up against a backstabbing opponent with a superior dragon and paid henchman at every turn, Terith stood facing an even more challenging task.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” he asked himself.
Terith raised his fist and rapped the oval workshop door. “Tanna? Hey Tanna, I need your help.” The panel swung inward under the force of his hand, revealing the leather workshop in its usual disarray, tucked into the hollow of a fifteen-foot wide great ivy stem.
Tanna’s voice called out from her back room, “Come back later. I can’t help you right now.”
“Can’t help? The race is six days away!” Terith marched into the workshop and threw back the leather curtain that divided it from her bedroom.
He was met with a scream.
Terith had a brief glimpse of her short brown hair, stalky limbs, button nose, and eyes that sparkled with spunk and indignation. Instead of a blouse she was wearing a corset laced about her waist with ribbing that supported her chest.
“Terith—how dare you!”
He backed out of the room, stifling a giggle.
“Tanna, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying on a riding corset, not that it matters.”
“A riding corset?” he laughed. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Tanna’s flaming face appeared in the curtain gap, “That’s because I invented it—”
“—to intimidate a dragon?” Terith said with smile tugging at his lips. “Not sure that’s going to work.”
“For your information, it supports—oh, never mind.” Her face vanished behind the curtain.
Terith raised an eyebrow in a bewildered expression. “Girls don’t ride dragons.”
Her face reappeared, her expression daring Terith to repeat it, and then disappeared again.
Touchy, Terith thought. One minute they’re heartsick and the next they’d roast you on a spit.
Tanna emerged buttoning on her work vest with its various sharp implements for gouging and cutting leather protruding out of its many pouches. Her fiery expression only added to the potency of her arsenal, making the popping coals in the hearth seem pleasantly cool by comparison. “What business do you have barging into my bedroom?”
“It’s about the race. I need your help.”
“More help? I’ve sewn everything from your boots to your riding harness, even that dragon-wing cloak—where is that cloak?”
He wasn’t going to admit having left it with Enala, so he pretended not to hear her question. “I just need one more thing, a sort of chest harness that has—” Terith cut short his explanation when she covered her ears.
Tanna lowered her hands, crossed her arms, and stared through him. “You know what I want.”
Terith blew a strand of loose hair out of his face and rolled his eyes. Killing the runts was something Tanna abhorred, especially because she would willingly raise any one of them—though Terith would never trust her with a hazardous creature that breathed fire if threatened, didn’t hesitate to use its razor talons, and harbored unpredictable mood swings. Just like Tanna.
“It is not the way of the Montazi to spare the weak,” Terith said.
Tanna stomped the floor in disgust. “Then you can make your own harness. You haven’t got anything to pay for it anyway and it will take me five days—plus a few nights, I’ll wager, to put it together—what is it, by the way?”
Terith raised his hands to pantomime a harness strapped to his chest. “It has four straps, with buckles and a ring on a swivel here in the center. The straps are interwoven with ivy fibers for strength, and the lining—”
Tanna interrupted with a scream, “Dah! There you go again, trying to trick me into making you another contraption. And I almost fell for it. Is Werm involved with this scheme?” she demanded.
Terith didn’t have a chance to answer.
Tanna made to move past Terith and out of the workshop, but he sidestepped into her path. “Tanna, please.”
“So you can marry a rich girl and live on a fat plantation way back in the upper Montas while the rest of us paint the border in our blood.”
“That’s not—that’s not why I’m riding in the challenge.”
Tanna made to step around Terith on the other side. He interposed again. “Please, Tanna. It’s my only chance. Werm already agreed to give me his biggest whistlers. All I need is a harness.”
Tanna’s eyes widened, her lips forming into a laugh that came out in a single, “Hah.” She shook her head. “You’re honestly going to strap yourself to a firecracker.”
“Yes.”
“Can I watch?” Tanna’s face had a luxurious expression, like this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to watch Terith finally make a mistake.
“If we get it ready in time.”
“Deal.” Tanna laughed to herself. “Riding a firecracker! What are you going to think of next?”
Terith looked down at her vest and blinked. “Are you still wearing that thing?”
“None of your business. Now out! I have a lot of work to do and your ogling isn’t getting any of it done.”
The door banged shut behind Terith. “Looks nice, anyway,” he muttered under his breath.
Terith picked his way through lush greenery, moving over and under the enormous roots that spread out radially over the top of the megalith. He rounded the central
summit of Neutat and descended the slope to the keep.
“Redif, report,” Terith hollered.
The keeper hobbled out of the keep and waved to Terith.
“Fifteen dragons healthy and war ready. Eleven in training.”
“Excellent,” Terith said. “Remember, it’s quality first, not quantity.”
“I’m pretty sure I taught you that, Terith,” Redif said with a knowing nod to his apprentice Endle.
“He taught the wind how to whistle, too,” Endle added.
“Well if I didn’t,” Redif bragged, “at least I taught it how to fly—and I taught you how to muck out the dragon cages, which is what you’d better be doing before I feed you to one of them.”
Terith clapped his hand heavily on Redif’s shoulder. He was taller than the middle-aged man by a full head. “You know, I heard you were the one who broke the first wind—are you really that old, or is that just a rumor?”
“Young upstart!” Redif roared, his dreadlocks swinging as he shook his head at Terith.
Changing the subject, Terith lowered his voice, “Listen, Redif. Pert has a velra.”
“A fishing dragon?” Redif said doubtfully. “But all the trained velra belong to rich folk in the upper megaliths . . . I suppose the owner suffered an unfortunate fall, courtesy of Pert.”
“I don’t know,” Terith said. “But there’s a chance he hasn’t trained very long with it yet.”
“Perhaps he won’t need to,” Redif said warily. “This changes everything. He has the advantage.”
“Where is Akara?” Terith asked, avoiding his gaze and anxiously surveying the cavern. An idea was brewing in his mind, something reckless.
“Resting in the rear of the keep,” Redif said. “I took her out last night for exercise.”
“Good. Let her rest again tonight. Then take her out tomorrow and expel all her fire.”
“But Terith, the race is one week away. The ragoon weed must seethe for fifteen to nineteen days—depending on the quality—before the rot will ignite.”
“Expel all her fire, and gorge her on fruit, both stomachs. Rest one day, and repeat.”
“Terith, you’ll be helpless without fire. If Pert is in the race—”
“I intend to stay in front. And we won’t have time to feed. Akara has to have enough energy to fly the entire route without stopping.”
“If that’s how you like it,” Redif said, his tone doubtful.
Endle piped up. “I suppose if the other riders play rough, you can always get Akara to puke some seeds on them.”
Nobody laughed.
In the next two days, Terith did what business he could: updating routes and schedules for border patrols and authorizing new excavations near the taproot for additional dugout homes. The weather was hot and muggy, more so than it had been in the higher Montas. Here the cliffs were still rising inch by inch with seismic thrusts as frequent as every week.
There was always plenty of work this time of year, besides the challenge of training the youth. Today he had a special task for Mya. He only had to find her, something her mother claimed was significantly harder ever since the young rider Kyet had taken an interest in her.
Terith knew all of Kyet’s hiding places. He’d used them himself.
Terith carried a leather bag concealing a yard-long cylinder made from overlapping layers of pasted parchment—a whistler. The tip was pointed in a cone and a small wooden kitchen funnel made the base. He climbed over an ivy root and skipped over a piled-stone ford that crossed the taproot spring.
The stream water seemed unpleasantly tepid, much warmer than he remembered it to be.
Horned and fanged bugs scuttled into the shade of broad ferns and under boulders as he approached—stinging or biting were practically mandatory for bugs on the megaliths.
Terith moved quickly to avoid herds of bloodthirsty flies and gnats from congregating around him.
Thankfully, buzzing scorpions avoided the flat tops of the megaliths altogether, preferring the canyon walls where pecking falcons could only hunt scorpions at peril of becoming a snack for the predatory dral.
Terith raced along the edge of the megalith, each step of his quick feet landing perilously close to the precipice until he turned in at another steaming stream and found the pair sitting together in a clearing.
“Ah-hah.”
Kyet jumped up with an astonished expression on his face.
Mya giggled.
Terith folded his arms. “Figured I might find you both here. I wonder if I should tell your parents where I found you.”
“I was just showing her this dragon egg. It was abandoned last season,” Kyet said quickly.
“Sure you were.”
At fourteen and twelve, Kyet and Mya were Terith’s best and brightest.
“Sorry, Kyet, but since you are the only truth seer around, I’ll have to hedge my bets.” It was a monstrously useful talent, but that didn’t help when the teller in question was Kyet.
“He was trying to kiss me,” Mya tattled, with a snort of a giggle.
Kyet’s face plunged through varying shades of pink and rose before finally reaching a brilliant crimson blaze of embarrassment.
“If you kept at your riding as well as you did at chasing girls, you might someday outdo me,” Terith said honestly.
“At chasing girls?”
“Off with you,” Terith said with a laugh. “I need Mya.”
“What for?”
Terith gave a determined stare and Kyet tucked the stony dragon egg under his arm, waved a limp goodbye to Mya and trotted back down the trail toward the village center.
Mya peered interestedly at Terith’s package.
Once Kyet was safely out of earshot, Terith opened the leather bag.
“Wow, a whistler!”
“Shhh.”
“Where did you get it?” she asked softly. “From Werm?”
“Yeah. Only this one is special. Would you like to help me test it?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Remember when I taught you how to sound distances?”
“Of course. I just make some rising and falling tones and listen for the beats of the echoes.”
“If I send this straight up, can you tell me how high it goes?” Terith asked. “It’s very important. I need it to be exact.”
“I . . . well, I think so. I’ve done it with dragons, though I stopped trying when one of them dived at me.”
“This is much smaller than a dragon, so you’ll really have to focus your voice on it.”
“I can try.”
“All right. I’m just going to—” Terith whirled around. “Come out, Kyet.”
Kyet mumbled and grumbled as he stomped out from behind a bush.
“Thank you for coming back to volunteer. You just won yourself a special honor.”
“I did?” Kyet said in a confused and cracking voice.
“Yes.” Terith planted the whistler—Werm’s foremost finned pyrotechnic creation—on a stone and handed a flint to Kyet. “You get to light it.”
“But I’m not wearing any dragon leathers. It could fry me.”
Terith smiled. “You’ll have to risk it.”
Mya chuckled as Kyet bent down to strike sparks against the fuse.
“Be ready,” Terith said.
Mya nodded.
A crackle sounded from the whistler. Sparks raced up its fuse. Kyet watched in awe at the chemical wonder, too entranced to duck and cover. The rocket blasted skyward, throwing Kyet flat on his back.
An instant later, a rhythmic throb filled the air. Mya’s voice gathered power as the rocket climbed a trail of smoke higher and higher. Finally, it turned over and Mya’s supernaturally amplified call cut off abruptly. She knelt down and gasped for air.
Terith tried not to laugh at Kyet’s white eyes staring out from a soot-covered face and helped Mya to her feet. “How high?”
“One hundred sixty-seven paces.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“You’d better be. Somebody’s life may depend on it,” Terith admitted.
“Whose? Yours? Oh—I get it. This is your secret weapon for the race, isn’t it?”
“All right, enough questions.”
Whatever inquisition Mya was preparing fled the instant the ground lurched. Terith was thrown onto his back but was up in an instant.
“It’s just a tremor,” Kyet said, putting a hand under Mya’s to help her up and hanging on in case the megalith rocked again. Or maybe he was just making an excuse for physical contact.
Terith grabbed them both by their shoulders, “All right, enough fun. You two get back to the—”
The second rumble sounded with a great crack that seemed to splinter straight though Terith’s bones and right up to his teeth. As the tremor rolled away, a fine mist boiled up from the deep as if something from dungeons of black hell had just been unleashed. Moist, hot air swirled over Neutat.
Terith’s mind raced. He’d heard about this kind of thing before.
Steam vent.
“We have to get off the megalith. Now.”
“What’s wrong?” Mya asked.
“Hell just broke loose,” Terith said, “Literally. Werm told me this might happen. If the ivy taproot breaks into the lava reservoir under the aquifer, all the water runs into the molten rock and turns to steam.”
“What did he just say?” Kyet mumbled. “It turns into a stream?”
A screaming jet of superheated vapor sprayed into the sky making a roaring sound like the whistler, but infinitely louder.
“Oh, steam. Right.”
“Mya,” Terith ordered, “sound the evacuation.”
The girl hesitated.
“Now, Mya!”
Mya took in a long breath and held it for a moment as light gathered around her. Terith and Kyet covered their ears. Mya made a piercing shriek that shattered the air. Birds scattered from trees and filled the air by the thousands.