“Host?” Herald had to bite back a sarcastic laugh. “That was no host. It was a mess of boys and shopkeepers and such, but never mind that, boy.” Herald looked as if he was stretched to his limits. “What of Prince Richard? That is where our duty lies.”
Jenka noticed that Mysterian’s ear was piqued to the conversation. He had just been about to tell her the whole of it, too, so this would save him an extra telling.
“You’re not going to understand some of this, Herald, but here it goes,” said Jenka. “I am bonded to the dragon called Jade. Zahrellion is bonded with the white wyrm called Crystal, and Prince Richard was bonded to the big blue that snatched him up at the preliminaries.”
“You told me all this back in the dungeon,” Herald interrupted. “But you just said the crown prince was bonded with the blue. What happened?”
“It was killed by a gigantic, red-scaled mudge,” Jenka waved a hand in front of his face and sighed with frustration. “Just listen. All of that happened after Prince Richard was taken by Gravelbone and his nightshade. They took the prince to the grottoes by Demon's Lake. I’m sure of it.”
“That demon has the crown prince?” Mysterian asked incredulously. “Why haven’t you told me any of this?” Her tone was scolding, and more than a little angry, but moreover she seemed suddenly stricken. Her entire demeanor had changed.
“I was just about to tell you,” he indicated Herald and shrugged. He wasn’t sure why she suddenly seemed so concerned. Up until he had gone to sleep earlier, all she had talked about was the dragon’s tear Jade’s mother had cried.
“He’s alive, though?” asked Herald.
“Aye,” answered Jenka. “As far as I know, he is.”
“What good would the crown prince do him dead, Ranger?” asked Mysterian weakly.
“I see your point,” conceded Herald. “He’s probably just a bartering token.”
“That he is,” Mysterian told them as she eased into the kitchen and took a seat at the table. “But not for no troll war or nothing of the sort. If the Goblin King noodles Richard’s brain then we’ll all be in a fix when he takes the throne, even more so when the Time of Confliction is upon us. That’s what this is about. We Hazeltines were the ones who predicted Gravelbone’s return, and if you know your history, then you’ll know that it’s true. It’s been one hundred and forty-three years now since Shtaro portended that Gravelbone would return in one hundred. She was off by almost half a century. He is evil incarnate, and he will tamper with the crown prince’s mind and barter him back for one concession or another, just like you suggested. Then, all the fargin demon has to do is wait for Richard to take the throne and start doing his bidding.”
“How will we know?” Jenka asked dubiously.
“His dragon would have known,” she replied. “It’s a shame that he had to meet his end. Royal was magnificent.”
“How did you know his name?” Jenka asked quickly. He hadn’t told her the blue's name, and was suddenly very suspicious.
“Where do you think Prince Richard and Royal met and conversed, De Swasso, in the king’s garden? I think not. Old Blanchard would have had Royal’s head decorating the wall opposite the wyrm’s twin. I helped them keep their secrets, so to speak.”
“What is all of this?” Herald asked. “What are you two talking about? We have to do something.”
“You have to go tell the queen, Herald,” Jenka told him. “Have swifters on the wing as soon as possible. Have the men at Port form a battalion and send them up into the grottoes to get him.”
“While you do that, Jenka and I will work a little magic here and see if we can’t come up with something too,” Mysterian told Herald. She had stood, and was now ushering him towards the door. “But don’t you go snitching the boy’s whereabouts to the notables or the queen.”
“I’ll not even respond to that, witch,” Herald retorted. “My honor is unquestionable. I’m a fargin King’s Ranger, and don’t you forget it.”
“You’re the son of a pig farmer, and honor you may have, but wits you’re short on. Mind your tongue. What if she orders you to tell her where he is? Will you follow that order? That’s what I meant.”
“I’ll come back after the sun sets,” Herald huffed. “In the meantime, I’ll spread a rumor that the boy's holed up in the cobbles north of the harbor.”
“In the cobbles? With the whores and the gutter-thieves?” Mysterian made a disgusted face at the King’s Ranger.
“They won’t look too hard for him there,” he said, as she opened the door for him. “They searched that area first.”
“Tell them I’ve headed south, Herald,” Jenka said, not exactly sure why he had done so. “Trust me. I’ve something that needs doing on Solstice Day to the north of town. Keep them away from the ridge. That’s where I’ll be. While the people are trying to celebrate, I have to meet a friend.”
Jenka was glad neither of them asked him who this friend was because he didn’t think he knew the answer. He just knew that he had to be there.
Chapter Twenty-Two
As soon as the door closed behind Herald, Mysterian locked the deadbolt, took Jenka by the hand and pulled him toward the table in the kitchen. She sat heavily, and motioned for Jenka to do the same. She sighed as if the weight of the world were pressing in on her. When he started to ask a question, she shushed him with a reptilian hiss that made his skin crawl.
“Your world is about to change, and you need to sit still for it.” She looked even older now and somehow defeated. “You’re not who you think you are, and that’s why Amelia sent you here. The note your mother sent was just a ruse to get you to my door.”
“What are you saying?” Jenka’s tone was sharp.
“I’m saying that Jericho De Swasso was not your real father.” Her hand shot up to stall his protest. “Only the Witches of Hazeltine knew of your get. Your mother is one of us, and one of the better of us, I assure you. You have no father, Jenka.” She stopped herself and gave him an apologetic look. “The seed that quickened to life inside your mother was concocted and brewed, not spurted from a man’s groin in a natural coupling.”
“I don’t understand, much less believe a word of what you’re saying. If this is true, then why wouldn’t she tell me? I never knew my father anyway, so there was no reason not to.”
“Oh there are reasons, Jenka,” Mysterian told him. “For one, Jericho De Swasso was a good and honorable man. He lived and died thinking you were his get, and his memory deserves no tarnishing. A divine sort of magic, like none ever seen before, had a hand in creating you. Just as some greater evil created that thing that calls itself Gravelbone. You must destroy him.”
“So I’m a bastard. What does any of this, or that tear, have to do with saving the prince and the frontier? Why tell me now?”
“You have to kill Gravelbone, Jenka. There are no two ways about it. That abomination must die. If he doesn’t, we cannot allow the crown prince to take the throne. He will soon be corrupted by that wicked thing, if he hasn’t been already, and with Royal no longer alive, we will have no way to prove otherwise. The council will order Richard’s death and he will die. But if you destroy the abomination then Richard can be saved.”
“The council? What council are you talking about?” Jenka was confused, and more than a little upset. Learning that the man who you thought was your father all your life really wasn’t was not an easy thing to swallow. Learning that the seed that conceived you was a witch’s brew was just plain disconcerting. Finding out that your mother may have been deceiving you all of your life was unforgivable, and the harshness of those sentiments began to boil inside of him.
“The Council of Three, Jenka. They are the ones who truly decide man’s fate. They are the ones who rule from the shadows and make things happen. The Outland wizard, Vax Noffa; Linux of the Order of Dou, whom you’ve travelled with; and the eldest of us Hazeltine, who happens to be me for the moment, we make up the trio. You were destined to be our champion, but the
n that yearling dragon found you, and you bonded with him. None of us expected that to happen, yet it has. No one knows how truly powerful you will become, but we all know you will become powerful, and your actions will affect the whole of the realm. In truth, you are humanity’s champion, Jenka. The Time of Confliction is swiftly approaching, and you and your fellow Dragoneers will have to defend us all when that time comes.”
“Why is it that you need that dragon’s tear so badly, then?” The question had formed on its own in Jenka’s mouth.
The old witch’s eyes narrowed, and she looked even older than she had just moments before. “I do not need it, Jenka, you do. I am old and foolish, and was thinking of using the tear's power to keep myself young, but that was before the prince and his eager wyrm went off trying to be heroes and got captured. In that crystallized droplet there is contained a wealth of knowledge and power. It was the power of the last known dragon’s tear that finalized your conception, and it emptied itself of energy to bring you to life. Now there is another. I can sense it, but only you know where to find it. Only you.”
“I think you’ve gone mad!” Jenka said hotly, as he pushed himself away from the table and started for the front of the house. “Only Jade knows where to find it. So I have to find Jade before I can make good on my oath. That is the truth. You’ll not confound me, witch. I swore I would bring you that tear, but I’m going to find my bond-mate and the crown prince before I even attempt it.”
“You’d be wiser to find Jade and the tear and then go after Richard,” she told him. “With the power of the tear on your side you can make things happen. Without it, you’re just pissing into the wind.” She knew he wasn’t listening to her.
“I’ll do what I have to do, Mysterian, and I’ll keep my oath, but to do it I have to find Jade,” He spoke as he unlatched and opened the door. “I have to save Prince Richard from the Goblin King, too.” With that, he snatched one of the cloaks from the post in the entry and disappeared into the sparsely crowded streets of Kingston.
Down in Gravelbone’s expanding lair, Prince Richard was terrified. He had been forced to witness, from his cage, the execution and consumption of not only several men, women, and children that had been captured by the nightshade and the troll hordes, but also the decimation of any troll or goblin that had cowered in battle or failed in its given task. The orcs, it seemed, were intentionally spared Gravelbone’s wrath, but only because they served him with a willing fervor and had a firm control over the trolls and the goblins. The ogres, Richard learned, were Gravelbone’s enemy, just as the humans and the pure-blooded dragons were. Two of the hulking, green creatures had been herded into the cage, and then were reduced to mumbling idiocy by the Goblin King’s horrific, palming grasp.
Richard stayed in the corner and out of sight, hoping to get the chance to slip away from the demon, but there were orc sentries posted throughout the main cavern area now, and bands of trolls constantly patrolled the long cave way that led up to the surface, not to mention the savage group of little goblins hiding down the end of the tunnel that led deeper into the earth.
The crown prince kept busy by sharpening a tin button he had gotten from the body of the ogre the nightshade had killed. It was the size of a large coin, and he thought that he might be able slice a jugular with it, if he got a lucky swipe in. It was nerve-wracking, repetitive work, because he figured that the freakish demon troll or his nightshade would hear the scraping and come finish him. He was trying, with little success, to block out the images of the two pleading children that had been eaten before his eyes yesterday. Gravelbone had let a small pack of goblins devour them right outside of the ogre cage where Richard was huddled. It was a sickening thing to be so helpless and afraid, especially when you were supposed to be the backbone of the land. He didn’t think he would be able to live with himself after watching in a huddle of terror as the mother pleaded to him, the crown prince of the kingdom, to do something to save her children from those needle-sharp teeth.
Gravelbone had twisted the woman’s head off and toyed with it for long hours after her blood had soaked into the rocky cavern floor.
The goblins were a little more than waist tall to a grown man, but they were deft and agile. Their skin was the color of damp ash. They blended into the shadows so well, that once, one of them had crept up on Richard and tried to take a bite out of him. Luckily, it had attracted the nightshade’s attention, for the slick, black-skinned worm saved Richard from the goblin’s teeth by snatching up the little bugger and crunching him. In the open, the goblins attacked like wolves or frenzied fish. A half-dozen of them could get on a man and eat him to the bone in a matter of minutes.
The orcs were every bit of ten feet tall, which was only a head taller than most of the trolls. They were bulky and heavy where the trolls were long and lithe. They had coarse, dark skin instead of bristled fur. The biggest difference between the two larger forms of goblinkin was that the orcs wore crude armor, and they carried the swords, axes, and other tools that had been collected from the villages they had sacked. All of them served Gravelbone dutifully, mostly out of fear, but many an orc relished the screams of the dying humans when the Goblin King gave them their nightly show. Richard was half expecting the evil, ivory-horned bastard to return any moment with fresh victims to torture him with.
Prince Richard held no false allusions as to what was happening. The demon was torturing him by killing the innocents. Gravelbone was showing his dominance over humanity one screaming murder at a time, and it was affecting Richard in ways he didn’t understand. Richard had actually pleaded silently to the gods for the next victims to be men, not women or children. What bothered him most about this was the fact that he didn’t pray for there to be no victims. It was as if that option had been removed from his mind completely.
Worst of all was that empty void in his soul where he used to feel Royal. The miraculous promise of hope that his bond-mate’s very existence had given him had been extinguished. Hope had fled, and there wasn’t much left to cling to.
“Pleeeeeaaaaase!” a girl’s voice howled from up the tunnel-like cave, causing a stir of excitement to rile the four orcs posted in the cavern. Somewhere, down the other end of the shaft, the skittering of goblin claws on the stone floor came to Richard's ears.
“Where are you taking me?” the girl cried out. The rough stone added an eerie reverberation to her futile calls. “Pleeeaaase! I want my mother, pleeease stop.”
Madness was taking hold of Prince Richard’s mind, and he didn’t think that he could take it any more. He put his face in his hands so he didn’t have to see her face when the Goblin King marched her into the chamber. He began rocking back and forth on the floor like an infant. It took the girl only a moment to realize that she had been led right into a big sticky brown mess of bones, insects, and gore. After that, her screams grew hysterical as the pack of goblins started for her.
“Looka yon,” Gravelbone told the girl devilishly, as he held the hungry goblins at bay with a glare. He pointed at Prince Richard. His voice carried easily to the crown prince’s ears. “Yon Prins gon com save ya.” The Goblin King started laughing manically, but the sound of his mirth didn’t come close to drowning out the wet tearing sounds of the goblins when they started eating the girl where she stood.
Jenka sat on the rim of the cauldron-like ridge that cradled Kingston, looking down at the distant and nearly empty festival area. He had been sitting there most of the day trying to find his center and focus. He was half-tempted to stalk down to the tourney grounds, and win one of the competitions that had once seemed so important to him. If he weren't so confused and lost inside, he might have. At the moment, however, he had no desire to be a King’s Ranger or to participate in anything that involved the kingdom. All he wanted to do was save the Prince, then go find his mother and ask her if what Mysterian had said was true.
By the look of things down on the competition grounds, there wasn’t much happening. Some retired field Lord wh
o had done some time out in the frontier was probably cleaning up the trophies, since every able-bodied man from all three islands had been called to duty, put on ships, and sent to Port to go fight the dragons and trolls.
Jenka gave a sarcastic chuckle. “What are you going to do when you get there, King Blanchard,” he asked himself out loud. He was up above the city, and no one could see him, much less hear him. “What would be the best thing for you to do with all of those men?”
An idea struck Jenka like a thunderbolt, but his excitement quelled as swiftly as it had surged. It didn’t matter if he came up with a perfect plan to swarm the grottoes and save the crown prince. His voice couldn’t be heard from the ridge above Kingston, and even if it could be heard, King Blanchard wouldn’t take the time to listen to him. “Would he?”
“He might,” a frigid and slithery feminine voice spoke from above him. Jenka whirled around to find Crystal there, her cold scales steaming lightly in the bright afternoon sun. Her huge head was looking almost straight down at him.
“Where did you come from?” Jenka asked, trying to get his thumping heart back into his chest.
“An egg,” Crystal hissed out what might have been a dragon’s laugh. “We are needed elsewhere, Jenka. Jade has gone missing and the Goblin King has taken over the frontier.”
“Can you find Zahrellion?” Jenka asked hopefully. “Can you go get her and bring her back here?”
Another hissing laugh emitted from the dragon in a cloud of cold, steaming breath. “I can do much better than that, my friend,” Crystal’s voice was soft and inviting. She lowered her body and extended her long neck forward so that Jenka could use her forearm as a step to climb up onto her back.
“You want me to…?”
The Royal Dragoneers: 2016 Modernized Format Edition (Dragoneers Saga) Page 20