The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga)

by M. R. Mathias

  He didn’t fall far. Claws gripped him hard and he felt the air being squeezed from his lungs. He wasn’t about to crash anymore, but his situation was no less bleak. Then he saw something that sank his heart so far into his guts that he didn’t care what happened next.

  There was Herald, near where the low protective wall had been breached along the orchard rows. The old ranger was full of splintered shards, lying amid a litter of bodies in the middle of a great red-black stain in the snow.

  Tears were streaming from Rikky’s eyes so hard he couldn’t see. He was suddenly on the ground, though. When he cleared his vision enough to make out what was happening, he was shocked. He saw that it was Prince Richard and the Nightshade that had just set him down.

  Without another thought, Rikky spotted his dragon in the sky. She was bleeding badly in several different places, but she was out of the Sarax swarm. Blaze wasn’t so lucky. The fire wyrm was still entangled with a score of them. March wasn’t seated, and Rikky couldn’t see him, but what he saw was as unbelievable as it was amazing.

  Prince Richard, no King Richard, Rikky corrected his thought, was slinging from a pony-keg what appeared to be water over the cloud of Sarax attacking Blaze. Where the liquid touched the monsters, bright blue and yellow sparks traced like veins over their skin. The one of them that was splashed the most was suddenly consumed in flickering tendrils of yellow flame before combusting in midflight.

  After seeing the Sarax explode, Rikky hop-stepped on his peg-leg through the soft, gore-strewn terrain until he found Herald’s body. Another of the things exploded overhead, and the terrible droning buzz shifted to a desperate howling pitch. He was almost overcome with anguish, but then Herald’s body sighed and twitched. With his dragon tear clenched tightly in his hand, Rikky made to use all the healing knowledge he possessed. He forgot about the world around him and started into his old friend’s body with his mind’s eye.

  He would save Herald this day, or exhaust his teardrop’s power trying.

  Chapter 12

  Deep in the temple, Zahrellion was as angry as she had ever been. Lemmy had just appeared and was explaining what was going on outside when Lanxe and a pair of red-robed druids appeared at her cell door. If the foolish rangers and witches had waited just one more day, Zah could have found out what they were feeding the Sarax. Her sweet voice went far toward tempting the dense night cell guard, but all of that was wasted effort now. One of the druids held her still with a spell while the other one made to put a damping hood over her head. Zahrellion’s ancestor, Grock Visium, had designed the hood to still captured Outland pirate-ship magi. It galled her to be going under it yet again. Before it was done, she saw that they’d put King Blanchard in a hood, too, then all she saw was darkness.

  Zah was urged, not so gently, down a corridor that led to the roofless interior worship area of the inner sanctum. She knew that was where they were going because she could feel the bitter air blowing through the open doors. She’d been there before when she’d ascended to the White Robe. This time, her arms were bare, as were her legs from the knees down. The wind inside the pentagonal garden was swirling hard. The rest of her was covered in a burlap smock that did little to cut the frigid air. Soon she was stepping through shin-high snow so cold that it numbed her soles before they had a chance to hurt. It wasn’t as bad for her as it might have been for someone else. Zahrellion’s bond-mate was a frost dragon, and she was used to sitting on icy cold scales with wild wind whipping. It wasn’t pleasant, though. Her toes were surely getting the bite, even now.

  King Blanchard was livid. Already his angry tongue had earned him an unmistakable wallop on the head with a staff.

  “What of the king?” one of the druids asked.

  “Blank his mind,” Lanxe said. “Linux’s body may come in useful someday. Throw Zahrahnah’s daughter on the block and extract her manna. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Blank my mind? Why you fargin’ dung lovin’ son of a--” King Blanchard started.

  “Crack!” a staff sounded as it impacted the hooded head of Linux’s body again.

  “I said render him docile!” Lanxe snapped at the druid holding the king.

  A loud roar sounded, and what must have been big clumps of snow came falling down on all of them. Men screamed and Crystal screeched out her anger. Zah felt the air grow even colder as her dragon exhaled her freezing spew.

  Lanxe spoke the word of a spell she recognized, and Zah heard her big wyrm whoosh out a grunt from the heavy impact of his powerful casting. Then someone hit her so hard that half her teeth went loose. Zah’s head rang from the blow, and over the din she could hear the angry buzz of the Sarax growing louder and louder.

  The hood was yanked roughly from her head, and she saw that there were several of the red-robed druids in the snow-filled chamber with her. A Sarax landed on the edge of the roof, its clawed feet knocking snow and icicles loose. It dove away at something, and Zah caught a glimpse of her dragon as she floundered in the air. Half a dozen Sarax went swarming over the white-scaled wyrm and her heart broke.

  “Here.” Lanxe grabbed a serrated ceremonial knife from one of his Order and shoved Zahrellion at another. He gave an older red-robed druid with eyes as black as coal the dagger. “Render her manna before that white wyrm ruins our way off.”

  “Yes,” the strange black-eyed druid hissed eagerly.

  Zah thought she recognized him, but from where, she wasn’t certain. It can’t be Frunian, can it? She knew she’d never seen eyes like that in the temple before. It was Frunian, or what was left of him, she decided. Another of Lanxe’s experiments gone awry, she guessed, or maybe a punishment for letting Jenka and Crystal spirit her away from that ship he’d taken her on when they all left the dungeons.

  It pained Zah that her dragon was being attacked. She knew she was as good as dead, but Crystal could still break away and flee. She knew the great frost dragon would never do that, but she wished she would.

  She found herself being dragged across the freezing cold altar block. Her half-numb skin ripped and scraped bloody as they fought to hold her still. Then Frunian’s empty onyx orbs were hovering over her, wild words were spoken, and the knife plunged toward her heart. The world erupted in a conflagration of roaring flames and raw magical heat. Not only was there a blade in her chest, but Zahrellion felt her skin burning and her mind sizzling away. Then all sensation left her and there was nothing.

  Rikky looked up from Herald’s body when a blue streak of magical force erupted from the temple and sent Zahrellion’s dragon flailing through the air. Suddenly, a handful of Sarax were attacking the frost wyrm. Rikky was relieved when he saw Silva come streaking in to aid Crystal.

  Herald was done, Rikky knew. He wasn’t dead yet, but he was beyond being saved. Rikky couldn’t leave his side or he would pass. It was that critical. And as much as he wanted to rejoin the battle, he felt an even stronger urge to be there with Herald for the end. Tears spilled down his cheeks. They were warm at first, but soon his exposed face was raw with cold.

  He was stricken with grief and about to collapse into a heap of it. He didn’t know what had happened to Marcherion or Aikira. He wasn’t so much worried about Jenka as he was the others. He knew Jenka was a survivor. Now Herald was dying. The cantankerous old man’s body lurched as he coughed up frothy blood. He gripped Rikky’s hand and squeezed it hard.

  “Tell… Tell that fat… fat fargin’ bastard Swineherd he’s ahh…” he managed, and then fell limp in Rikky’s arms.

  Rikky let out a long, keening wail. Reason left him as he screamed out his anguish. After he caught his breath, he snatched up Herald’s old sword and went hop-stepping blindly away.

  The sound of howling wolves erupted through the temple and into the open-roofed area where Zahrellion’s soul was being rendered into Sarax food. The lead wolf leapt and hit the black-eyed druid full on. It turned into Mysterian as they tumbled across the floor. Another old witch came skidding to a stop before she blasted
the startled blue-robes into limp sacks of pulped flesh.

  “The girl,” Mysterian told one of her witches before she was struck by Lanxe’s kinetic blast.

  King Blanchard fell into the corner, cracking his head on the blocks. The Eldest of the Hazeltine tumbled across the trampled snow and rolled right back up to her feet. The spell she unleashed shot into the druid and shifted his form into a warbling wavy stretch before drawing in on itself and disappearing in a huge explosion. The blast of orange-purple witch magic nearly killed them all.

  In the midst of Mysterian’s unexpected arrival, Lanxe, and at least one of his red-robed cronies, flashed away. A pair of Sarax attacked then. They came skittering from above into the chamber like roaches. These had been feeding well, for their toothy maws were bright with blood and torn strands of flesh.

  One of the druids who didn’t teleport away with the others tried to command a Sarax. It ignored him and went straight for his head. The other Sarax darted in at the bloody offering lying on the altar, but Mysterian jumped in the way.

  The old Hazeltine was gouged by a claw, but her witchy sisters blasted the creatures into oblivion. Soon, the only sound, beside the alien drone, was the wet wheezing Zahrellion’s breath made as it passed in and out of the knife-hole in her chest.

  Mysterian went about getting Zahrellion away, while some of her sisters searched the temple. Zah’s condition was serious, and Mysterian was so intent on saving her life that she left the unconscious and still hooded body of King Blanchard lying on the floor forgotten. For all she knew, he had been teleported away with the High Druidon.

  Chapter 13

  Jenka kicked and squirmed, trying to get away from what was pulling him, but he only managed to hurt his open gut. He was about to start fighting again, but he came out of the suffocating whiteness into the evening and found himself face to face with Tkux the ogre. He blinked the astonishment from his eyes and looked around. Marcherion was a bloody mess, and one of his legs was swollen to the size of an oak branch. They were in a clear area of forest, but surrounded by drifts and scraped-out walls of snow that were twice as tall as a man. It was like the snow forts he, Grondy, and Rikky used to make when they were younger.

  “Where’s Rikky and Aikira?” Jenka managed to ask. His ears were so damaged he couldn’t even hear himself. He may have been shouting. Now that he wasn’t being dragged through the snow with numbing ice against his gut, he was starting to feel the full throb of his wounds again. “Where’s Jade?”

  The ogre pointed to where the young green wyrm was coming down out of the sky. Jenka panicked; his dragon was covered in thick dark blood. After a few moments of watching Jade, Jenka realize that the blood he was seeing was his own.

  He was woozy, and everything swam away from him for a while. When he came to again, it was full dark. There was a small wood fire burning, and the smell of it was comforting. He was awake long enough to hear Rikky crying and Aikira moaning, but thankfully sleep pulled him back under.

  Mysterian’s distant cackling brought him awake the next time. It wasn’t a mirthful laugh he was hearing, though. It was a sorrowful one, and it wasn’t coming from far away; his ears were still clogged. Before Jenka could sit up, Zahrellion was easing down near him, holding her bandaged chest, as if it pained her greatly to be moving.

  “On your back, lass,” one of the witches growled in a harsh, yet motherly tone.

  “Here I will sta… ack... ack... now that hick... ick... his eyes are open.” Zah’s distorted voice was a distant, but welcome sound, and the way she squeezed his hand told Jenka that she had something to tell him. At first he thought she just wanted the conversation to be private, but when he saw her eyes, his mind went to the worst possible scenario it could come up with.

  “Rikky?” Jenka sat up and looked around for the youngest Dragoneer, but didn’t see him. His gut started a deeper throbbing from the movement. He did remember hearing Rikky crying, so that meant he probably wasn’t dead. Jenka was hurting terribly, but he didn’t care.

  Zahrellion stilled him with another squeeze of his hand. “Herald is as good as dead,” she said simply. Then she went into a terrible bout of coughing. When a bloom of bright scarlet appeared in the bandages over her chest, Jenka realized for the first time she was severely injured.

  “Aikira?” he asked. He had to swallow down a lump the size of a summer melon just to speak. No wonder Mysterian was carrying on as she was.

  “I’m here,” Aikira stepped into Jenka’s line of sight, and he saw that her head was scorched and swollen. Even her eyelashes were missing, and the edges of her ears looked crispy and raw. He forced a smile at her, and was glad to see her respond with an easy gap-toothed grin.

  Jenka kissed Zahrellion’s cheek, rolled over, and looked up at the morning sky. It was snowing, but even the fat flakes couldn’t hide the flocks of scavenger birds coming to feast. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to curl into a tiny little ball and stay there until it all passed, but he knew he couldn’t do that.

  “Why aren’t they attacking anymore?” he asked.

  “King Richard doused ‘em with seawater,” one of the witches said.

  “Scalded ‘em a fire, it did,” added another.

  Jenka saw that there were a few rangers and more than a half dozen witches huddling in the trampled clearing. Jade was near. Jenka didn’t see him, but he sensed it.

  “That’s what that bladder pump thing is.” Rikky came limping up. His eyes were red and swollen. His nose was chapped an angry shade of red from all the dripping and rubbing. His whole head steamed in the crisp air. “Has anyone seen Lemmy?”

  “Saw…uck…ack…him…my cell. Fo… fo…for a moment.” Zahrellion’s color had all but faded away. She was as white as the tangled hair that framed her pretty face. One of the witches moved over to attend her. Zah stubbornly went on. “Where…uck is King Blanchard? He was…uck...uck...hood.”

  The witch spelled her asleep with a touch on the forehead then, and Jenka was thankful that she was resting. Her skin had become so pale that he could see her blue and green veins underneath. Even now, her breathing was shallow and labored.

  He couldn’t believe Herald wouldn’t make it through. He’d seen the mess that exploded tree had made of him, but he still held hope. Death had no use for the stubborn old cuss. “We have to save Herald. We need to get back to the castle and regroup. The ogres can guide those that can travel. The rest can be carried.” Something occurred to him then. “How are Marcherion and Blaze?”

  “Marcherion’s legs are broken, and his dragon is all chewed up,” Rikky said. “Blaze can fly, but he lost a bit of his tail. Crystal is the only dragon wounded badly. She was savaged, but even she will recover with wings intact.”

  “We are at our weakest,” Aikira said in a raspy, yet melodic voice. “No one is guarding the star ship. King Richard is shipping most of the people away, but those remaining will be no more than Sarax feed. Worst of all, the Outlanders have nowhere to sail to. King Richard will never let them flee to the islands. We have to protect them.”

  King Blanchard was nearly frozen when the hood was finally pulled from his head. To his numbed surprise, it was one of the Royal Guardsmen from the Mainsted palace standing there looking at him worriedly. He was certain the feet of the body he was in were frozen, or ruined with bite, but he was glad someone had found him. He couldn’t move, though, nor could he talk. He did grunt and nod that he was conscious.

  “By the hells, Highness, you’ve ruined my feet,” said Linux, from Rolph’s body, as he started casting a restoration spell that would slowly warm the king from the inside.

  “Is it you?” King Blanchard asked in a tiny whisper.

  “It is,” Linux answered. The look they shared was more relief than anything.

  “Do you think I would leave you?” It was his wife, the queen, speaking now. King Blanchard’s eyes must have been deceiving him, because for a moment it looked as if she had a snarling canine snout. S
ometimes he forgot that she was a witch of the Hazeltine. There was another witch with them. He couldn’t believe Linux hadn’t died in his body. He remembered it now, seeing the guardsman roll over his corpse and then back-scrabble away. And his wife... what was she doing here?

  Ohhhh. His feet were starting to tingle. The pleasant sensation slowly shifted to a hard ache—an ache like no other he had ever felt before. It was suddenly as if his feet were immersed in fire. He was consumed with it. He cried out so loud that his throat tore with the effort. Then all of a sudden the absence of pain was so abnormal that he felt as if his feet were pillows, or puffy clouds.

  The queen stepped forward and he embraced her lovingly. Obviously she had come through a great deal to get there to him. When he smiled at Linux, the guardsman’s face scrunched up in disgust.

  “What happened to my tooth?” Linux threw his arms up.

  “Never mind, we must be off,” the queen said. “Here, love, hold on tightly,” she told her husband as she morphed back into a fierce looking witch-wolf.

  King Blanchard shuddered and nearly fainted at the sight. When Linux climbed onto the other witch-wolf and they leapt up to the ledge of the courtyard’s roof and bounded away, he knew it was wise to follow. Where his witchy wife was taking him, he had no idea. He was glad to be going there, though, and as much as he despised Linux deep down for soul-stepping him in the first place, he was glad to see him, too.

  Part IV

  The Outlands

  Chapter 14

  Hard winter weeks passed at the castle while the Dragoneers and their dragons recovered. They had gotten Zahrellion back, and that was what they’d set out to do. The price paid for that victory was beyond imagining, though. There were fewer rangers than there were witches left, and King Richard’s last ships were already setting sail from the Mainland for good. The Frontier was no longer a promising place. The Dragoneers who could fly ventured out when the weather permitted and brought home tales of destruction and blood-stained snow. At best, they felt impotent to stop what was happening. No matter how strong the dragons were, flying in a white-out was near impossible. At least Marcherion was awake and speaking. Both of his legs were splinted, but he would recover. Herald, on the other hand, was lying on one of the replenishing slabs the witches discovered in some hard to find chambers. He was still and pale, and might as well have been a marble carving.