The Dragon's Fury (Book 1)

by D Mickleson

  He bit off another piece of pork.

  A broad smile grew on Triston’s face. “You’re my best friend, Ald. Did I ever tell you that?”

  Alden puckered his brow, chewing thoughtfully, then shook his head from side to side.

  “It’s true. You mind if I, uh, help myself?”

  With an overly-polite gesture, Alden indicated that he could.

  Half an hour later, Triston sat with his back to a tree trunk, holding his bulging stomach with both hands and wondering if he was ever going to be able to get up again. He’d eaten so much it hurt. It felt wonderful.

  He was watching the heavens, vaguely aware of Alden going on about what they might find when they reached the spot marked on Trinian’s map.

  Earlier that morning the sky had appeared friendly, its azure fields pocked with bulbous puffs of white like gigantic sheep ready for shearing. But now a front of fast-gathering darkness, like an invading wolf pack, was rushing down from the north. The breezy warmth of the summer morn had turned strangely cool. Even as he looked up, a few cold drops struck Triston’s upturned face.

  “Should be more than enough for the two of us, and then we’ll be able to settle anywhere we want. We’ll have the whole empire at our beck and call,” Alden declared confidently, turning to Triston. “You ready?”

  Triston struggled up with a groan, aware of Alden’s impatient gaze as he hoisted his pack and carefully adjusted the straps. “I was thinking about the riddle again.”

  “Of course. What else have you done the last three days? Er, besides coming up with creative uses for dead vermin.”

  “At least I didn’t steal from some poor farmer—”

  “No, but you ate what I stole which is much the same thing.”

  “Forget that. Look, what does it mean, “My bones lie next to his who took my life”? How do you read that part?”

  Alden raised an eyebrow. “What does that part have to do with the treasure?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Well, there’s that last bit, about the dragon and the slayer—”

  “Just name the sin we both concede awakened dragon’s fire and slayer’s deed.”

  “Exactly. Well, the whole thing seems to be about those two. That can only be Magog and Willbrand. How many other dragons and dragon-slayers do you know?”

  Triston nodded. “That’s what I thought. But then, it’s very strange. If Willbrand was dead too at the time of its writing, as the riddle suggests, then who wrote it and why?”

  Alden yawned pointedly. “Trist, all this was a millennium ago. Anything could have happened in the meantime. Your dad’s map, the riddle, they could have been created centuries after Magog died, and they’d still be centuries old.”

  “But don’t you think—”

  “Look, what I think is we need to get over there, have a good look around, get as much loot as we can find, and then get the hell out of this joy-forsaken province. Right? Before every bounty hunter in the empire comes looking for us. And after Luskoll, they will.”

  Triston looked west, watching with unseeing eyes as a sparrow plucked ants off a rotten log, letting the harsh finality of Alden’s words wash over him.

  “Trist, sometimes you have to stop thinking and act. Let’s just go and see what we—”

  “Do you really think Wyrmskull’s lost to us forever? I mean, are we outlaws now as long as we live?”

  “I hate to break it to you, but we sort of killed the Seer and blew up Luskoll. We’re done here, man.”

  Triston said nothing. Away to the north came an ominous rumble of thunder like an echo of his inner broodings. The idea that he might never again return to the only place he’d ever called home wasn’t as easy for him to accept as Alden made it look. Were the Guardians already there, waiting to arrest them the moment they passed through the palisade?

  “Wyrmskull’s behind us,” said Alden, retrieving his walking stick, then stepping up to stare west beside him with eyes which still shone with anticipation. “Corellia too, probably. Her Grace is too well known here. But it’s like I’ve been saying, the empire is vast beyond our reckoning.” He turned to the east, gesturing grandly. “The whole world is out there, waiting, ready to do our bidding.” He slapped Triston hard on the shoulder and added bracingly, “They just don’t know it yet.”

  “I don’t know what my problem is,” Triston said with a shrug. “It’s not like I had a real life there or anything. I should be glad to leave.”

  Alden looked at him, his eyes growing hard. “They never accepted either one of us.” He waved a hand toward Magog’s Rise dismissively. “Plague take the lot of ‘em.”

  Triston frowned. “Kara will miss you.”

  Alden laughed, shaking his head, the pent-up bitterness on his face vanishing. Lightning flashed above them, followed at once by a deafening peal. Plunging forward into the trees, he shouted into the thunder, “I was about let her go anyway.”

  Triston paced beside him, picking his way through the underbrush with care. “Oh yeah?” he said with a smirk. “Is there a cuter maiden in the village I somehow missed?”

  “Maiden’s right,” he grunted, bashing a slender sapling out of the way with his stick. “It’s her old man. He never let up. Couldn’t get a moment alone with her.”

  “Watch it!” said Triston, fending off the batted sapling as it snapped back into his face. “Probably for the best in that case,” he muttered, half to himself.

  Alden gave him a sharp glance. “Why’s that?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “No no. Out with it.”

  Triston stopped walking, Alden slowing to a halt a few steps farther on.

  “They’re different, women. They’re not after a bit of meaningless fun.” He looked down at his needle-covered, stew-smudged boots. “They want something real.”

  “Something real?” repeated Alden with a mocking grin. “Something real is exactly what I wanted to give her.”

  Triston looked up, his face grave. “You get bored and move on. She probably would have ended up with child and alone.”

  Alden’s olive skin flushed russet to match the trees, his smile frozen in place. “More shameful bastards running around. That what you’re worried about, Trist?”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  There was another rumble, louder than the first, and suddenly the downpour hit them. A wall of slanting rain, driven hard on a wind that swirled down from the north, poured through the canopy and pelted into their unblinking faces.

  “OK, you’re looking out for her, is that it?” Alden shouted over the torrent. “Fine. Two things. First, we won’t ever see her again so this is pointless. Second, you wanted her as much as me so who are you to judge?” When Triston didn’t answer, he shook his head, still grinning coldly. “Oh yeah. And unless I’m wrong, you’ve never even been with a woman, so what do you know about what they really want?”

  Triston felt his skin grow hot. Suddenly glad for the cooling downpour, he lifted his face into the slanting rain, squinting up at the billowing columns of black overhead.

  “Never meant to judge,” he told the sky.

  “What?” Alden yelled over the howling wind.

  “Nothing!” he shouted back. “This is stupid. Let’s go!”

  The Crow Road was a quagmire of mud-holes and sludge. Passing as suddenly as it began, the storm had left behind a soggy world of drips overhead and squelches underfoot. Alden had pressed a ways ahead, but now turned back, waiting for Triston with arms folded across his chest a hundred yards down the road.

  Triston took his time watering a blackberry patch. “Jackass,” he muttered to himself, refastening his trousers. “Could have had plenty of women—”

  The soft approach of feet sounded behind him.

  Triston spun around just as a child stepped out from behind a boulder. She was very young, clad in dirty wool, and standing shoeless in the wet grass just off the road. Her eyes were full of fear, but she smiled shyly, pulling a
few dripping locks out of her eyes as she stared up at him. Triston blinked in surprise.

  “Hello there,” he said, smiling. She laughed and twisted awkwardly, not taking her eyes off his. Triston laughed too. “What’s your name?”

  The girl’s smile flickered. She stepped away from him, giving a nervous exhalation, but staring avidly. Triston looked more closely and saw something else in her too-wide eyes. What was it? No, it wasn’t fear after all. Not exactly.

  Was that shock in her face? Something was seriously wrong. Why was she here alone, and what had those bright eyes witnessed that they bore such a haunted look? A coldness touched him, like an icy hand tracing one finger slowly over his heart.

  “Where’s your mom and dad?” he asked. “Can I help—”

  “Anissa!”

  A man’s voice rang out behind a grassy rise north of the road. The girl turned eagerly at the voice, and at that moment a man strode into view. He stopped short when he saw Triston and the girl, then broke into a run. “Anissa!”

  Triston took a few steps back, not wishing to alarm him, relieved that this man must be her father. The man ran straight up to the girl and seized her into a fierce hug, lifting her into his arms and holding her tight to his chest. “Anissa! My child, my child.”

  Triston recognized the man as one of the shepherds who drove his flock up to the village market from time to time. “Excuse me,” he said, not liking to interrupt. “I couldn’t help but notice—is something wrong?”

  The shepherd turned to look at him, and Triston took another step backward. The man’s forearm was gashed with a deep, ragged cut, the skin swollen and infected. But Triston was chiefly struck by those eyes. They matched the girl’s perfectly, though perhaps the man wore his pain and shock more openly. There was something else there too, something wild and uncomprehending. Without a word the man ran on, not back over his fields, but on, fleeing southeast into the trees with his daughter in his arms

  Triston stared after them, and the cold hand’s grip tightened. What was happening? He turned to the west and saw Magog’s Rise at the far end of the road, clearly visible now that he was out of the dense wood. Squinting, he could just make out over the long miles a tiny village, fence encircled and wreathed in haze.

  A lot of haze.

  The village always smelled of wood smoke when he returned from the wild, gray billows rising from every cooking fire. But he would swear the air was normally clearer than that. Admittedly he rarely traveled so far east. Perhaps it was always this smoky when low clouds hovered overhead.

  He felt a sudden urge to be there, to see the familiar faces and hear the latest news. Maybe there had been a fire. Perhaps a fire would explain the shepherd’s strange behavior?

  But no. Wyrmskull was forbidden to him now. And the shepherd’s troubles were no concern of his.

  He and Alden would make for the point marked on his father’s map, take whatever they found there, and then . . . what?

  Triston had no idea.

  THIRTEEN

  THE DRAGON

  Hail Dragon, proud foe, who alone of earth’s creatures strove for mastery against the sons of men.

  Argent Silverstyle, Rise of the Dominion of Man, 316

  Triston was sure this was the place.

  Bone-chilling water dripped from his locks and ran down into his eyes. But his gaze was unblinking, fixed on the cold, clear water below.

  Where are you?

  “I’m building a fire,” said Alden, looking worried. “Get you warm. And we can check the map one more time, just to be sure.”

  “Go ahead,” said Triston, paying him no heed.

  He needed no fire. He’d studied the vellum map so often over the last few days that the glowing image was seared into his memory. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw it, the eerily-lifelike dragon standing guard beside a watercourse which snaked down the south side of Magog’s rise between the Wildwood and the open country.

  This watercourse.

  When he’d first studied his father’s map and saw the tiny stream, Triston knew he’d seen it before, believed he’d even drunk from it once. But he’d never heard that it had a name. Most villagers were too wary of the Wildwood and the legendary Farthians concealed within to stray so far west.

  Earlier that afternoon, straying west themselves, Triston and Alden had stumbled upon a frothy freshet cascading south down the hillside, bursting with storm run-off. It was exactly what they were searching for.

  Excitement building, they followed it up the hill, musing aloud about what they might find when they got there, wherever there was.

  Magog’s Fury? The dragon’s legendary hoard? A hidden enemy?

  Or nothing at all.

  What if the dark rumors of Trinian’s sorcery were baseless? All his life, Triston had longed to discount them, but no longer.

  Then they stepped into this clearing and a shiver ran down his spine.

  This was it, surely. A power rested here that he could feel, as if they’d been joined by an unseen companion. Triston was reminded of times in his childhood when he’d known his mother was home with him in their cottage, times when he felt her unique presence even when she was silent and out of sight.

  But whose presence was this? Strange, yet somehow familiar.

  A wall of rock rose up before them to the height of four men, sheer but curving like a bowl. Near the center, over a smooth-carved lip, the stream spilled down with noisy delight, coming to rest in a translucent pool. Somber firs, evenly spaced as if someone had planted them, encircled the water as an overshadowing guard. Somehow their east-stretching shade failed to darken the pool’s light-filled depths.

  “Trist, what’s up?” Alden had asked, seeing the awe in Triston’s face.

  Triston had stepped up to the water’s edge.

  “We’re here.” He’s here.

  Alden had given him a quizzical glance. “OK. We’re here.” He glanced around with a look of polite curiosity. “So what does that mean exactly?”

  Triston ignored him. The water. It was clear—too clear, impossibly clear—as if its surface was no more than a delicate mantle of glass floating on thin air. Shrugging off all but his trousers, Triston plunged headfirst into the crystalline depths.

  A minute later he shot back to the surface and clambered to dry ground.

  “Magog,” he managed through clattering teeth and blue lips.

  Alden had raised both eyebrows at this. “Magog,” he’d repeated, non-plussed.

  Triston was hugging his torso, shivering. “In the water. I know it.”

  Alden looked between his friend and the unnaturally still surface of the pool. “I watched you. You swam along the bottom, feeling the sand and pebbles. What did you find?”

  “Told you what I found. It’s him.”

  After a moment, a wan smile touched Alden’s lips. “OK. I get it,” he chuckled nervously. “Good one. I suppose I deserve that.”

  Triston stared at him blankly, then returned his gaze to the water.

  “Joke’s over, Trist. I called it. You’re having a laugh because I was a meathead earlier. Funny stuff, really. You had me going there for a second.”

  “Shut up. I need to think.”

  Gray twilight had fallen over the forest. Night was already thick under the eaves of the trees, and the shadowed underbrush twitched and twittered with small unseen animals. Alden was hunched over his fire, muttering to himself and casting dark glances at Triston.

  He hadn’t moved or spoken in over an hour.

  “Alden!” Triston suddenly spun on his heels and faced his friend. “The riddle. Read it again.”

  Alden scowled and poked his fire with a stick.

  “Oh yeah, sorry,” said Triston absentmindedly, dashing over and seizing the sheepskin. Only a handful of villagers possessed the art of reading and writing; of these, most were merchants skilled enough to perform basic record-keeping. At his mother’s insistence, over his frequent griping, Triston had mastered the flow
ing Corellian script long before his voice first cracked.

  “Here,” he said, pointing excitedly. “If guilty heir would trample hallowed way, know the door is shut both night and day!”

  Alden stood up and folded his arms across his chest. “OK. So what do you make of it?”

  Triston didn’t answer. Facing west, he studied the horizon. No golden light graced the evening sky, no blushing rouge or royal purple gave fanfare to the passing of this day. Only a deepening gloom and a softening of all contrasts marked its humble death. The gray remains of the morning’s storm lingered like a corpse, cold and unmoving, blocking out the sun. But away to the west, Triston knew its merry orb sailed on, shedding golden rays which maybe colored the caps of far-off waves red and gold as it made its descent below the rim of the earth. Soon, very soon . . . .

  “Trist, what’s going on?”

  Triston shook his head distractedly. “Just wait.”

  Once again, the pool drew his eyes to itself. In the dying light, its surface had transformed into an opaque mirror of startlingly reflective power. The ice-cold depths beneath were now hidden by a gently rippling image of treetops under a darkling sky.

  Minutes passed, the twilight deepened. Nothing happened.

  With an impatient exhalation, Alden stepped in front of him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded, almost yelling.

  Surprising Alden with the speed of his reaction, Triston twisted free and shoved past him, stepping right to the water’s edge.

  “Come on,” he muttered, and then, with a shout, “Do something!”

  No answer came but a breezy rustle in the treetops, their gentle sway reflected in soft ripples upon the opaque water. Alden swore and hunched back down by his fire, the purple-flamed map at his side.

  “Tomorrow we’re moving on, further upstream. I think if we—”