His lethal tail smashed against the ground where she’d been moments ago. She dodged him, rolling again, and again, as his tail thumped and smacked the earth beside her, missing her by a hairsbreadth each time. She scrambled to her feet and brought the sword up in front of her. His tail slashed down on it and he roared in surprise and leapt backward, wrapping his tail around him.
“Why you little sneak,” Egil hissed, yellow eyes flashing wildly. “You cut me.”
“Did I do that?” Zaria asked, looking at her sword with feigned innocence. “I didn’t think swords were sharp.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become ye, Princess,” Koll said, his voice a perfect match to hers, the tinny quality gone. Her voice – his – was so cold it blasted along her skin leaving frost in its wake. “I suggest ye not try it again.”
She spun around in fright, her pulse wild in her ears. She couldn’t see him. She searched the deepening gloom for him and saw nothing.
“Over here.”
A finger tapped her on the shoulder and she screamed, knocking the hand away. Koll chuckled. She turned to face him and gasped. There he was, as her, a figure clad in darkness, dripping in it, oozing with it. It emanated from him, sucking all the light from their surroundings.
“Now hand over the sword.”
“Don’t give it to him,” Christoffer yelled from above, before choking and gasping for breath.
She looked up but couldn’t see him. It was too dark.
“Christoffer, where are you?”
“Don’t you worry about us, Zar-Zar,” Filip said from somewhere in the same general vicinity. She squinted, trying to make out shadows or shapes.
“Forget them,” Koll said, drawing her attention.
She couldn’t when her friends were dropped again. They shouted in the dark, their cries cut short as they landed heavily on the ground. Zaria gasped in shock. She strained to see them, but couldn’t make them out in the inky midnight. She tried to run toward them, but a hand stopped her cold.
She looked into the face of evil and it was her own. Her breath hitched, her head swirled, and her heart clamped tight in panic. He had so much magic, so much power. It came so easily to him, and all she had was one little sword… and then suddenly she didn’t have even that.
Chapter Fourteen: Light and Darkness
Koll crowed in delight, waving the sword about and wielding it with a deftness that put Zaria’s limited skills to shame. He held it out, aiming it at her heart. Her whole world shrank to that one point. She saw the Nordic runes begin to glow, soft and faint, like whispers of light and smoke.
“Nothing can save you now, Princess,” Koll said, his mask perfectly in place. “Not even your little friends.”
He’d again dropped the ye’s and yer’s from his speech.
“We won’t ever stop trying to defeat you,” she promised, her voice cracking a little under the stress.
“Doesn’t matter. I won’t give you the chance,” he said, and then called out, “Guys, help! Help! I’ve got Koll cornered.”
Zaria gasped, “You do not!”
“Filip, come quick,” Koll begged.
“It’s a trick, Filip,” Zaria warned as her face flushed with unease, and her stomach cramped in horror.
What had Egil said? Koll would hurt her friends and then see if they’d let her or him close enough to try to help? They shouldn’t come any closer; they’d be injured, or worse, killed.
“Zaria?” Filip moaned, shifting somewhere in the dark. “Where are you?”
“I’m over here,” Koll said. “Hurry, Koll’s too strong for me, I won’t be able to hold him back much longer. I need your help to chain him up.”
“It’s a lie,” Zaria denied hotly. “Koll stole the sword. I’m the one he’s trying to chain up.”
“I’m coming, Zar-Zar,” Filip said, shuffling closer.
“What? No! Don’t come any closer,” she said. “He wants to hurt you.”
“I’m Zaria, you’re Koll,” Koll cried, managing to sound perfectly horrified. “Stop trying to confuse my friends. Your ruse won’t work. Filip, we have to tie him up or we’ll never get out of here.”
“Shut up,” Zaria growled. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. You’re not me.”
Koll’s lips twitched once, twice, and then he said, “Please, hurry! Bring Aleks – Christoffer, too, if you can find him.”
“Just hang on, okay?” Filip said from a little ways away. “I’m a bit bashed-up; I have to find my stick.”
Zaria blinked in confusion. Stick? Aleks had the stick. Her heart started thudding wildly. Was Filip lying to figure out which of them was Zaria? She held her breath, hardly daring to hope.
“Keep an eye out for Koll’s brothers,” Koll warned. “He’s their way out of the Under Realm. They’re going to try to stop us from recapturing him.”
“No, they won’t,” Zaria said. “They know Koll’s got the sword. They want you to help him capture me.”
Filip’s pale face appeared in the sallow light emitting from the sword. Zaria swallowed, seeing how bruised he was all over. She made a move toward him, but the point of the sword cut into her neck, stopping her cold.
“Are you okay?” Koll asked, and he sounded worried. “Where are the others?”
“Zar-Zar?” Filip asked softly, hesitating. He looked between them.
“It’s me, Zaria,” she and Koll said at the same time.
“Where’s the dwarvish chain?” he asked Koll.
“Filip, no,” Zaria cried, her eyes welling with tears. “Don’t help him.”
“Be quiet, dragon. We’re not scared of you. Not anymore,” Koll said.
She tried to catch Filip’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at her. He held his hand out to Koll and the dragon smiled. He reached into his pocket and dug out the chain. Zaria watched helplessly as he tossed it over and Filip caught it, winding it around his arm. So the stick wasn’t a ruse at all, he really did believe Koll’s lies.
She held her hands out in supplication. “Filip, Filip, I swear I’m not Koll.”
“Tell me how to get my mother out of Egil,” Koll said.
Zaria swung her eyes to him. “Wh-what? You said he ate her. She’s not dead? How can I get her out?”
“No,” he countered. “You said it. Not me. Tell me.”
“We’ll worry about Queen Helena after we tie up Koll. Do you have the sword steady?” Filip asked.
“Yes, I’m steady. I can hold him back,” Koll said, his voice determined.
She stared at Filip as he crept through the circle of light. She was hurt and angry. How could he? How could he not see it was her? The real her! She tried to back up and stumbled over something, falling on her butt. She scuttled backwards, watching as both her friend and her enemy stalked closer.
A hand snaked out of the darkness and grabbed her wrist. She shrieked. The hand yanked her backwards and together they tumbled down a hill in the dark.
“He’s getting away,” Koll shouted.
“Not wearing those shoes, he isn’t,” Filip said, swearing.
They raced down the hill. Zaria looked to her rescuer. She could just barely make out his spikey hair, as inky black as the night around them, revealed only by the faintest of light shining off it. Christoffer! He was her rescuer. She frowned as she realized he was as banged up as Filip had been. He held his side and wheezed.
“Christoffer,” she said, helping him to his feet. “How did you recognize me?”
“It was in the way he spoke. There was just something fake about it,” he said. “Smug, maybe.”
She hugged him. “Thank you, thank you for realizing I’m me.”
He hugged her back. “No sweat. But how come you haven’t used any magic?”
She could have slapped herself. “It never occurred to me.”
“Never occurred to you? Zaria – you’ve got powers! That’s like the mother of all jackpots.” He muttered to himself. “Didn’t even think of them? What a waste.”
&nbs
p; She shoved him. “You try thinking of your newly found powers when a sword is at your throat.”
“That’s exactly when I would think of them,” he retorted.
“I seem to remember when you didn’t believe me about a troll.”
He stuck out his tongue. “Sure, fine, bring that up. So maybe I would have panicked, too. But come on Zaria – zap him with something! I lost my daggers, so I’ve got nothing. Hurry!”
She concentrated on her hands and shook them out. She willed the magic to gather in her fingertips. She shook them again, trying to picture the magic there sparking. A hint of feeling raced down her arms. Magic gathered there like an unformed lump of fire. She remembered how her mother’s magic looked when she hurled it at Koll, and the fire tightened into a sharp defined ball of purple magic.
She looked over her shoulder and hurled it at the two figures running toward them. She prayed it would miss Filip, but if he got a little singed, he deserved it. The ball zeroed in on Koll. He slashed through it with the sword.
“See, that’s Koll,” the dragon told Filip. “Fireballs are a dragon’s trick.”
“Don’t be thick, Filip,” Christoffer shouted back. “Zaria just used her magic.”
“Mate?” Filip asked, slowing down.
“Oh no,” Koll cried, gasping like a fish. Zaria did not sound like that after running, did she? “One of the brothers is imitating Christoffer. What do we do? Where’s Aleks? Where’s the real Christoffer?”
Zaria planted her feet. She resisted Christoffer’s tug on her arm. She spun around, hands gathering magic.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “We have to find Aleks and Henrik. They managed to herd Egil toward a female ellefolken tree before it went all super dark.”
“A tree?” Zaria asked, blinking up at him.
He nodded. “Her branches – er – roots – whipped out and snatched him off the ground, tangling him up until he was unable to move. Others of their kind helped.”
“Wow. We should herd Fritjof toward one of the trees.”
Christoffer shook his head. “That won’t work. He saw them do it. So we won’t be able to fool him.”
A low growl sounded nearby. They whipped around to see two glowing yellow eyes creeping closer.
“Can you make a weapon?” he asked her, his words low and urgent. “Because now’s as good a time as any to try.”
Zaria thought about the Drakeland Sword, how its hilt was engraved with scenes of dwarves fighting dragons and embedded with amethyst and pearls. It gleamed sharply even in the dullest light. She could picture the runes along its blade glowing faintly. It was a sword for a hero.
It popped into her hands. She squeaked in delight. “The sword, Christoffer, I’ve got the sword!”
A roar of fury ripped out of Koll’s throat from behind them. He bellowed for blood.
“I could have used one, too, you know,” he groused, as Fritjof leapt from the darkness and slammed into him.
Zaria and the sword slashed out and stabbed Fritjof. He howled, rearing up onto two legs. She pulled the sword from his side and dashed off into the night, feeling for one perfect moment that she could take on Koll and win.
Then she stumbled into him, Filip nowhere to be seen. Koll had transformed into his deadly handsome self, dressed to kill with a perfectly straight tie, crisp white long-sleeved shirt, golden wing-tipped shoes.
“How did ye do it?” he growled. “How did ye get the sword?”
“Magic,” Zaria taunted, securing the sword in her grip.
“No,” Koll said. “Ye have to see in order to do magic. It’s too dark.”
“I did see it,” she said, pointing to her temple. “In here.”
Koll stumbled back. He looked upward and chuckled. “Oh, Queen Helena, I understand ye so much better now. To think, to think ye hid her from us all this time. If we had known her true gifts, we would have stopped at nothing to kill her.”
“What are you babbling about?”
“Never ye mind, Princess. I don’t intend for ye to live long enough to care.”
He snatched her up, sword and all, and jumped into the sky, transforming into his dragon form. As a dragon, Koll eclipsed his brothers in size. The Under Realm could barely contain his massive form. Zaria trembled in his talons as he soared away from her friends and his brothers. He veered away from the reaching roots of the ellefolken trees, burning any that came too close.
They approached a small, war-torn palace situated in a valley at the center of quatrefoil-shaped grounds. Its stone courtyard was scarred and broken. The roof collapsed on one side of the rectangular building. The tower listed precariously to one side as if it had been bashed by an enormous fist, or dragon’s tail.
He dropped her into one of the still-smoking gardens. Zaria scrambled to her feet, keeping a tight grip on the Drakeland Sword. Here, it wasn’t so dark, merely twilight.
Her gaze flickered toward the palace, taking in the broken window glazing, trying to figure out which one might have been her room had she been raised down here, and then she didn’t have time to think as Koll rained fire down on her. Using the sword, she deflected his fire, as he had deflected her magic.
The sword grew hot in her hands. It became so uncomfortable she nearly dropped it, but with a fierceness she hadn’t expected to find, Zaria held on and swung it with all her might. She caught Koll’s tail, slicing through his armored scales.
He growled in rage, his giant wings beating, beating, beating, as he swooped. She was forced to duck, but she pivoted and struck him as he flew around for another attack. This further enraged him.
His nostrils smoked, and his eyes skewered her. With one flick of his tail, he hit her hard on the shoulder his brother had bitten. She crumpled in pain, landing heavily on her knees.
He dropped to the ground like a stone and melted back into her form. “Yer sword cannot kill me. It is not as brave as that. Ye might as well give up. Give up, Princess, and ye can rest.”
She wanted to give up. This was an impossible task for someone like her. She hadn’t the skills, or the strength, or the power. She wanted to go home. She wanted to forget about swords, and dragons, and friends who became trees. She wanted the safety of her books and her maps. She wanted her mom and dad. She didn’t want to do this. She was nobody’s hero.
As Koll moved closer, one clear thought stood out to her – that which she saw that looked like her, was not her. It never was. The thought, small as it was, broke the chains of mesmerism that encircled her in its tight grip. On its heels came the realization that these thoughts about giving up were his, not hers. He was trying to turn her into his puppet. Why?
Zaria stayed on the ground, watching as he circled her. She said nothing as he continued to tell her all the ways she would fail. Her mind raced. Why wasn’t he finishing her off? What had him so scared?
It wasn’t the sword. He didn’t care about that, not really, not now that he was free of the dwarf chains. Was it her powers? He said something about her powers. What was it? Something about her true gifts…
“Why did Helena send me away?” she whispered, trying to sound small and cowed.
“Bow to me, Princess. Serve me, always. Promise me, and I will tell ye all ye want to know. I will teach ye all ye’ve yet to learn. Swear on it.”
Zaria shook off the sticky, clingy cobwebs of his words. He would not ensnare her again in helplessness, hopelessness. “I won’t.”
“Ye will, or ye’ll die,” he sneered.
What did she need to learn? How did her magic work? Zaria’s eyes drifted close. In her thoughts, the haunting song sung on the river-troll’s cruise ship Ursula echoed in her mind… the words snatched at her thoughts like a faraway dream. Only this time, the words no longer a threat, but a promise.
In the beginning all was truth and good,
Where it was, there divine light stood.
But then mist covered the ground,
And out of it was darkness found.
It spoilt truth, so it was misunderstood.
What next came from eternal night,
Was born in shadows and inspired fright.
Where fear hides, peace is stolen up and bound,
And good is seemingly lost, never to be found.
But when you see past the delusion,
And know good reigning as the only conclusion,
Away will melt all confusion,
And you will be truth and glory crowned,
Believing not the lies beneath the dragons’ hood.
In that instant, Zaria realized all of Koll’s power and strength was a mere belief instead of reality. That he could appear so strong and seem so powerful was the trick, the base of his abilities. He gained only what she gave up. In trying to tell her she was weak, helpless, and powerless to stop him, he could gain strength, power, and magic. But only if she let him sway her. He was a house of cards, fearing a stiff wind would knock him over.
The illusion of herself, which he presented, no longer had the power to sway her. Neither did his words. She saw him for what he was – a great, big, fat, pretender. She launched herself at him, throwing all her weight behind the sword. He started in surprise, but it was too late. She’d done it. She’d impaled him.
He stumbled back, gripping the hilt in confusion. He stared down at his chest. Her features melted off his face; then, his face also appeared to melt as he shifted into his colossal dragon form. Zaria braced herself to be eaten or something equally dreadful, but something strange was happening… the bigger he grew the less dragon-like he appeared, becoming a shifting, sinewy, cloud of darkness.
Koll yanked the sword out of his chest. He hurled it to the ground where it embedded itself like a lawn dart. He roared, his fury whipping about her in one unending yell. He swooped and engulfed her in the shadowy, smoky cavern of his mouth.
Zaria shrieked as she fell down his gullet, sliding on a starless velvet sky. She landed back on the burnt ground like a flightless bird. Shakily, she searched the ground, trying to find her equilibrium. But the night of his being hid all from her senses.
Zaria Fierce and the Dragon Keeper's Golden Shoes Page 16