Aleks shrugged, and started organizing them. “You two should grab a few more of those daggers. Hand me your stick, Filip. Give those rocks to Henrik, Christoffer. It’ll be good to have something useful against the dragons besides the Drakeland Sword.”
Henrik shook his head in amazement. “I never knew the daggers could be pulled from the water. This will swing the fight in our favor.”
“Let’s go chase down that storm,” Christoffer said, grinning as he handed Filip two daggers and plucked a third one for himself.
Chapter Thirteen: The Dragon Brothers
The trouble with chasing storms is that one invariably finds one, Zaria thought, flinching as fresh bolts of lightning arced across the sky, followed by loud cracks of thunder. Or was the thunder a dragon’s rage-filled roar? Perhaps she was being too fanciful. A loud rumble, unaccompanied by a light show, reached them, raising every hair on her arms. Perhaps she wasn’t being fanciful after all.
“I don’t like this,” Henrik said, eyeing the swirling clouds above, heavy and dark, thick with rain and magic and menace. “We’re walking into a trap.”
Christoffer laughed, clapping Henrik on the back. “Of course we’re walking into a trap. What you should be worrying about is if we’ll walk away from the trap.”
“Not helpful,” Aleks scolded, nodding to Zaria.
She stopped rubbing at the gooseflesh on her arms. “I’m not the only one who’s scared.”
“I didn’t say –”
“You haven’t met a dragon, Aleks,” Zaria said. “I have, and it’s not something you can prepare for. It doesn’t matter what weapons you have, or what magic you can do, or what you think you know. Koll changed reality as I knew it. I saw things that weren’t truly there. I couldn’t stop him. If my birth mom hadn’t arrived when she did… he might have escaped right then and there.”
“As I was saying,” Aleks said, crossing his arms and glaring. “I didn’t say I wasn’t scared, or that you were the only one who was. All I wanted was for Christoffer to lay off the cheerful gloom and doom talk. It was getting on everyone’s nerves.”
“Sorry, Zaria, Aleks,” Christoffer said, hurriedly, trying to placate them both. “I’ll admit it. I’m a bit scared. I couldn’t even hold my own against a troll, how am I ready to face a dragon? Even with these fancy daggers.”
“Sometimes you have to face things even if they scare you,” Henrik said to them, his expression pensive. “That’s what my father did when he took his role as king. He did it down here, too, which makes it all the worse, because he’s isolated from the rest of them in a way. The others all became trees topside, back in the real world, and their roots formed the Under Realm.”
“What’s the difference?” asked Christoffer.
“By becoming a tree down here,” Henrik said, looking back the way they’d come, “he’ll never see his people again. All communication will have to be relayed through the other kings. He’ll never be able to talk to us directly. After all this, I’m not sure when, or if, I’ll see him again. Or talk to him alone. I’m scared. What if I never have his guidance again… what if I’ll never be ready… what if I’ll never be able to do what he’s done?”
“He was scared, and he did it anyway. He’s the bravest person I know,” said Zaria. “He thought you were ready.”
Henrik’s gaze was faraway when he whispered, “I’m scared I’ll disappoint him.”
She shook her head vehemently. “You’re his son. How could you not be as brave as he is?”
“He wants me to protect all of you, but what if I can’t? I’ve never encountered a dragon before…”
“I have,” interrupted Zaria. “I have seen one, and I ran. What if I run again? I can’t let the world down. I can’t let Helena down… or Hector. I can’t let you down. If I fail, the dragons escape.”
“But what if you don’t fail, Zar-Zar,” said Filip, his welcome voice breaking through the growing disquiet in the group. “What if you succeed?”
“Then I’ll finally have atoned for all that I did to get us into this mess,” she said.
“What do you have to atone for, Princess?” Henrik asked, puzzled. “For my time as Olaf’s prisoner? For Christoffer’s? For freeing Koll? For being tricked?”
“Yes,” she said. “All of it.”
“That’s just nuts,” Christoffer said, shaking his head. “You can’t take all that blame and guilt.”
“Oh, but she can,” interrupted a voice she’d dreaded hearing. It reached her like a recording of her own voice, as unfamiliar as it was obviously her own.
It turns out that chasing storms doesn’t mean one finds a dragon. It means a dragon finds you. Standing opposite them leered her doppelganger. The dark storm clouds were silent, lowering masses behind his cutting figure… her cutting figure.
In the gloom, Zaria could see that Koll had gotten better at mimicking her appearance. It wasn’t quite as good an imitation as her voice had been, but the resemblance was as startling and creepy as she remembered. As she watched, the trollish look in her facial features softened and revealed a new form – a mirror-copy of herself. The troll melted away, as it did when he became a man.
The scariest thing was its accuracy, and now that she was wearing a pair of golden shoes like him, even those matched. They both wore Mary Janes. They both had slightly mussed braids. They both had violet eyes, the yellow in his having faded away. They wore the same clothes. There was nothing to distinguish them apart. This was not good. Not good at all.
“Ye see… ahem,” Koll cleared his throat. “You see, if the Princess hadn’t come back to Norway, Olaf and I wouldn’t have been able to play our little game. We needed her in order to put our scheme into action.”
“I’m not playing your game anymore,” Zaria said, pulling the Drakeland Sword from its scabbard and bringing it in front of her. “I know what you are this time. I have the sword and –”
“You’re not afraid to use it,” Koll supplied, his eyes twinkling with malevolence. He wrapped a braid around one of his fingers. “My dear, dear, Princess, there’s no use fighting anymore. You’re defeated.”
Henrik stepped in front of her, tightening his fists. “She has the sword.”
“Yes,” Koll agreed. “She does, but not for long. My brothers and I are going to take it from her.”
“You lie,” Aleks said. “We all know that the dragons are wrapped in dwarvish chains. Only the sword can cut those links.”
“Well, not the only thing…” Koll replied with a cruel smile. “Though thing is perhaps not the right word. Queen Helena freed my brothers.”
“She would never!” Zaria cried out, lowering the sword. Her arms were starting to shake from the strain of holding it upright.
“Never, Princess?” Koll asked. “Can you not think of a single circumstance where your mother would release my brothers? I thought of one, and it didn’t just work once, it worked twice.”
“No,” Zaria whispered, her voice cracking. “I don’t believe it. I don’t.”
“You tricked Helena into thinking you were Zaria, didn’t you,” Christoffer said, his voice hard and angry. “That’s the only reason she would free a dragon. She would free one to save her daughter.”
Koll clapped. “For a human, you’re not as brainless, as I would have thought. Right in one. I pretended to be Zaria. I got quite good at it, did I not?” He executed a little spin, hiding behind a pleasant smile. “She knew you were coming with help, so that’s what my brothers and I pretended we were. First, I was the Stag Lord. I told her you’d fallen off Hart – a falling root knocked you over – and Fritjof took you. Together we went and rescued you… well, me as you.”
“I don’t understand,” Zaria said, working to get the words past a tight lump in her throat. “You couldn’t be both Hector and me.”
“I’ve gotten good at being in two places at once, in two forms at once, a skill I never would have learned if it wasn’t for you and your mother, Princess. I really
should thank you for that, but I won’t.”
“She wouldn’t have fallen for the same trick twice.”
“But, she did. I would have thought the dragon keeper wouldn’t be so easy to dupe, but it just goes to show you, a thousand years on the job will make you complacent. It worked so well, I can’t help but think we overly complicated our past attempts at escape. Although, we did rely heavily on sentiment this time. We didn’t really have that option before you were born.”
Zaria’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I’m here now, and I’m going to stop you. You won’t be able to trick her anymore by pretending to be me.”
“Not so fast. As you can see,” he said, indicating the sky at large. “There’s no more magic in play. You’re too late to even save your mother, Princess. While I’ve been distracting you, my brother ate her.”
Zaria’s knees threatened to buckle. “Your brother ate – which one – which one of your brothers ate my mother?”
Koll laughed at her distress. “Egil. He’ll be joining us, shortly. A big meal like that always slows him down. It’s just too bad that this little trip of yours is wasted effort. Hand over the sword, and we’ll spare your lives.”
“Which one is Egil, again?” asked Christoffer, his voice trembling faintly.
“He who inspires fright,” Henrik said grimly, flexing his hands again to hide a tremor.
“That’s the younger one?” Filip asked, swallowing past a lump in his throat.
Henrik shook his head. “The middle one.”
“I-I don’t think we should wait for him to arrive,” Aleks said. “I’m s-start-starting to shake.”
“Ah, yes,” Koll said, steepling his fingers. “That means he’s approaching. Any moment now… There he is.”
A bolt of fear raced up Zaria’s spine as she turned her head a fraction of an inch. Afraid to move, she stood there petrified. She didn’t want to see what form Egil took. She didn’t want to know… no, she had to know… for the sake of her sanity. She had to see him.
The new figure was Koll’s near twin in looks, that is if Koll was in his true human appearance, and not copying her looks. It was easy to see the family resemblance. Egil was a tall, slender good-looking man with long dark hair pulled back by a black silk ribbon, a straight nose, clean-shaved angular jaw, gleaming bright white teeth, and chilling yellow eyes… so cruel, Zaria was sure he’d murder her on the spot. This thing ate her mother.
“Koll, I see you are playacting again,” Egil said, and his voice was like that of a panther’s low growl, sending out waves of hair-raising terror. “What is it to be this time? Shall the boys have to choose between the two of you? Shall I wound them first? Then we could see, if they’d let one of you near enough to help heal or… in your case, kill them off?”
“Ye talk too much, little brother,” Koll said, his tinny Zaria voice sliding backwards toward his own natural tones. “Yer job is to take the damn sword.”
“Eat the sorceress, take the sword – I am not your minion,” Egil shot back. “Fritjof might toady to you, but I won’t. I don’t care if you’re the first dragon or the last.”
“Tell me ye ate her,” Koll said, no longer affable or sounding like Zaria.
“Of course I ate her,” Egil sneered. “I swallowed her whole.”
“Y-you d-don’t l-look l-like a dra-dragon w-who a-ate s-someone. Y-you’re t-too sk-skinny,” Christoffer said. He wrapped his arms around his body, trying to stem the chattering of his teeth.
Egil stared at him, and laughed, amused. “I’ll cut to the chase. Princess, if you don’t want me to eat your little friend for dessert hand over the sword. Trust me. I’ll do it.”
“I-I’d g-give y-you in-indigestion,” Christoffer said, backing away. “I d-don’t ma-make g-good de-dessert.”
“Don’t do it,” Aleks warned, raising his stick.
“Don’t do it,” Egil mocked. He fake-lunged at Aleks, who flinched hard.
Koll clapped his hands and the world darkened. The golden light from the ellefolken kings dimmed, as if a cloud blocked them from view. Zaria felt the others gather closer to her, circling up. She jumped at the brush of fur from Henrik’s cloak on her shoulder.
“Steady,” he said softly by her ear. “Princess, what should we do?”
“We shouldn’t wait to make the first move,” Aleks said. “We should attack. Give us your orders, Zaria.”
“Yes, attack us, Princess,” Koll said. “We’d like that, wouldn’t we little brother?”
Zaria could barely think, assaulted as she was on both sides by the dragons’ powers. Darkness on one side, fear on the other. She struggled to remember her own heart in all of this.
“Any time, Zar-Zar,” Filip said, pulling his daggers out.
“Y-yes, any t-time,” Christoffer stammered, doing the same. “W-we sh-should g-get t-this o-over w-with so w-we c-can shut him up a-about b-being a kn-knight.”
Zaria choked. “Knights are what’s needed right about now.”
Henrik took from his belt a slingshot he’d made from fallen roots. He pulled a rock from his pocket and slotted it in place. Christoffer waved his daggers wildly as Aleks swung once with his stick. The dragons were amused by their pathetic attempts at bravado.
“Those are the weapons ye bring to fight us, Princess?” Koll gave his brother a side-long look. “Let’s make this quick. Where is Fritjof?”
“Here,” said a snakelike voice above.
It belonged to a large serpentine dragon with a snout as round and as wide as a suction-cup, covered in spikes and filled with large, razor-sharp teeth. They gleamed like deadly daggers against his dark pewter-colored scales. His mean, yellow eyes were also protected by spikes and his head by a crown of silver horns.
“Oh crap,” Christoffer whispered. His Adam’s apple plunged up and down. “We’re not going to be kn-kn-knights. We’re going to be dragon kibble.”
Fritjof’s whip-like tail snapped and caught Henrik up in the air by his leg. All the rocks he’d been holding rained down on the ground, like so many marbles. He shouted and thrashed. Filip and Aleks charged in to rescue him, crying, “Henrik!”
Zaria moved to help, when from the corner of her eye, she saw Egil prowl toward her and Christoffer. He hadn’t bothered to transform into his dragon form, and yet he was still mind-numbingly terrifying. Christoffer’s hands shook as he prepared to use the daggers.
He flicked one at the dragon, only to watch it fall woefully short of its intended mark. Egil laughed cruelly, and shot a bolt of magic at him. Christoffer screamed and fell down, clutching his arm.
“Don’t let him get near you,” Zaria said, brandishing the sword. “I’ll take care of him.”
“I think not, Princess,” he growled, diving toward her, his shape changing mid-leap.
His snarl could’ve scared someone twice her size to death. Zaria ducked, and he sailed over her. She spun around, heart in her throat, and saw a beast plucked right out of her nightmares. It was bold and sleek, a natural hunter. His wings were folded back and when he moved teeny, tiny, black and purple scales rippled like fur. She watched the hypnotic movement of his muscles tense and release with each exacting step as he stalked toward her.
She backed away, keeping the sword in front of her. Sweat beaded on her brow and trickled down her back, cold with fear. Her arms trembled with fatigue. Palms slick with sweat, slipped on the pommel. She fought to keep her breathing steady, to not hyperventilate.
He seemed to know all this and it made his eyes light up with excitement. His tongue forked out, tasting the air, tasting her fear. He repeated his low growl, which ended with a crack as he flicked his tail.
He lunged and Zaria felt the Drakeland Sword buck against her grip. It flew up to meet the dragon’s attack and cut into his shoulder. Egil snarled and spun back to attack again. When he did, the sword leapt to meet him in battle.
Zaria laughed weakly. This is what Hector meant when he said the sword wasn’t afraid of facing dragons. It want
ed to face dragons. She could feel the strength of the blade. It was embedded in the special ore, the Drakeland Sword forged from it into a weapon stronger than steel. Its fearlessness, buoyed her spirits and Zaria adjusted her grip.
Instead of defending, she attacked. She chased Egil, the dark prince of fear, and he retreated under her strikes. He clawed at her, and she blocked him. He lashed his tail; she evaded. Quick and sure, Zaria felt for the first time the power of dauntless courage.
Round they went, Zaria only dimly aware of her friends’ struggles. She’d catch a glimpse of Aleks’ red hair, or a hint of white fur cloak swirling around ankles, or a blur of motion as Christoffer or Filip flew by. She glanced up at that last one. Both were caught up in Fritjof’s talons. He bashed them together and dropped them. They plummeted headfirst to the ground, screaming bloody murder.
“No!” she shouted, reaching out for them knowing it was futile.
Fritjof swooped and caught them up with his tails. His gruff laughter fizzed along her raw nerves. She made to join Aleks and Henrik and felt her legs buckle. She cried out in pain as teeth clamped down on her shoulder.
Backwards she fell, as Egil toppled her. She scrambled for footing, flailing and windmilling for balance. As she fell, she raised her arms to push the dragon off her. She hit him right on his ugly snout, cutting her hand against his razor-sharp scales. They were not as fur-like as they appeared.
The sword dropped beside her as she sprawled out in the dirt. Egil growled in triumph and released her. She moaned in agony. She didn’t want to look and see the damage. All she wanted to do was lie still and pray for someone else to rescue her.
That thought snapped her awake. There wasn’t anybody else. She was the rescuer, and she couldn’t give up. If she gave up, so would her friends and they would lose. This was too important. She found the strength to struggle into a sitting position, wincing only a little. She ignored her shoulder.
As she tried to stand, Egil knocked her down again. The breath flew out of her and her chest ached with the desire for air. Tilting her head to the side, Zaria spied the Drakeland Sword inches from her body. She rolled for it, grasping it before Egil could knock her down again.
Zaria Fierce and the Dragon Keeper's Golden Shoes Page 15