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

by M. R. Mathias

  “It’s a conniption, I’d guess,” the witch said. In truth she had no idea why King Blanchard was on the floor seemingly fighting himself for control of the body he was in. Nor did she know why the triangle tattooed on his forehead was glowing in pulses. Either way, she had to get him out of there to where the others were gathered. He was a king, after all.

  Linux actually felt Rolph’s head tingle, but knew he was feeling something through the subdued ethereal, something that pertained to him, not Rolph. He knew where the king was drinking, and ran as fast as Rolph’s fit body would carry him. When he burst into the Ornery Ogre, he nearly bowled over the witch and the king. He was taken aback when he saw his own tattooed visage glowing. It was staggering, as if he were staring at his twin brother, or into a reflecting glass. But he was not as surprised as he was when King Blanchard shrugged off the witch and attacked him.

  He’d never fought himself before, but throughout his life he had fought Lanxe a score of times. He didn’t want to damage his body any more than it had already been hurt, but he knew he could make short work of it if he had to.

  The two of them went rolling into the slushy street like vagabonds. Linux came up into a grappler’s stance, and when his thin, frail body gained its feet, he leapt at it.

  “Stop it, man,” Linux yelled through clenched teeth. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “’Tis coming,” the king replied in a strange voice as he darted in.

  The king rolled left, then quickly right, but he wasn’t nearly as fast or strong as Rolph. It only took a moment for Linux to pin the riled king who was wearing his skin.

  “What’s coming?” the witch asked as she loomed in. “What is it?”

  “Worse,” was all King Blanchard could manage before his head fell limply to the side.

  Lanxe’s forehead was glowing, too. So were the half dozen red and blue robes who had escaped the temple. They were feeling the same commanding sensation that had taken hold of Zahrellion and the king, only they were following the strange direction as if they were marionettes. They left the warmth of the cottage they had found abandoned after the temple was attacked, and started into the mountain forest like drones.

  Two of them didn’t even bother to put on cold weather gear, and they soon fell away to freeze to death as the others trudged mindlessly over a ridge into a neighboring valley.

  Lanxe tried to resist the feeling compelling him, but it was no use. He led the others to a large opening, and into the darkness they went. Light spells cast by command of an unknown puppet-master flared forth from a few of the druids, then they were standing before a huge, slightly curving piece of polished steel.

  It was a different part of the star ship, Lanxe realized, and a feeling of great anticipation flared in his head. He began inspecting the exposed area of steel with a mind that wasn’t his own. When his eyes saw a thin line in the metal, a distant hope kindled to life in whatever was controlling him. He was compelled to stick his finger in a small, perfectly formed hole and pull. A door the size of a book opened, revealing three round knobs. He pushed the top one in, and a loud, straining grind sounded. A moment later, the rock started to crumble in a way that showed that this was no natural cave. A huge panel opened down toward them like the draw bridge on King’s Island. The druids had to scramble to get out of the eroding structure. Once back in the stark white of day, they could see it was a huge door. A dank bitter stench roiled out with a cloud of rust-colored dust that stained the snow orange where it settled. The door panel obliterated most of the cavern and ended up forming a massive ramp. The druids who weren’t crippled by the crumbling rock were overrun by the horde of hungry Sarax that came spilling forth.

  Lanxe stood helplessly as the Sarax closed over him. He and the others were savagely torn apart and eaten before he even had the chance to think.

  Jenka saw a flash of scarlet in the distance and somehow knew that it was Crimzon. There was no other explanation for seeing blood-colored dragon scales at ground level over on the far ridge. Now that he was following the movement, he saw a slight pillar of steam evaporating over the great fire wyrm.

  He scanned the sky and saw no lingering Sarax. Thousands of them had burst out of the weakened encasement when it finally gave way, but after that first day they hadn’t been seen at all.

  See if he is in need, Jenka told Blaze through the ethereal. Had he and Jade been circling any farther away from their castle’s magical field, the communication would have been impossible. Crimzon, though, had a powerful field of his own, and responded before Blaze did.

  I am onlyss in sneed of yon ssstable, Crimzon bellowed. The infernal sssnow is maddening on my ssscales.

  It issss, hissed Blaze. Itchesss.

  What stable? asked Jenka.

  Crimzon didn’t respond. He just kept on lumbering through the snow, like some massive four-clawed snake. There were huge patches of pink scaleless flesh all along his lower spine and around his wing muscles. After watching him for a while, Jenka wasn’t so sure the century-old dragon’s wings were ruined. In fact, when he came to a deep ravine he had to cross, the huge wyrm leapt into flight and glided the few hundred feet across. He landed and went back to walking, though, and it looked as if the short flight had pained him greatly.

  When Crimzon finally made to approach the castle, he moved through a gap in the landscape that Jenka had never noticed before, but which now seemed perfectly obvious. There was a hissing snap, the sound of one of the vanishing wall force-fields being removed. Jade carried them around, and Jenka shook his head at the fact that none of them had ever noticed how the lowest portion of the structure was built.

  There was an opening just big enough to allow Crimzon through comfortably.

  Jenka had Jade land and then he slid to the ground to look inside. He was feeling pretty low and figured that Crimzon’s silence was a sign of his disappointment. They had sworn to stick together and stand against the Sarax, but now the Dragoneers were scattered, some of them terribly wounded. They had failed, as far as Jenka could tell. The witches said it wasn’t really Zah’s doing, but it was a Dragoneer who had just breached the encasement and set the rest of the Sarax free. Jenka felt responsible.

  He was afraid, but when Crimzon’s intense gaze found him he saw a sparkle of something that he felt to be hope. He also saw sadness. He noticed there were two huge saddles lying in the corner and realized that this was once really was Crimzon’s stable.

  Thes drones awakened mores than the sSarax, said Crimzon. Andoal hasss awakened, too. You musst ssseek him to the north.

  Who is Andoal? Where in the north?

  He isss a Mountonian, Crimzon explained. The last great mountain in the northern range. He well help usss, if you assk for him by name.

  What is a Mountonian?

  Thatsss youllss have to see for yourself. Buts you and Jades must make hastess. The big dragon’s chuckle seemed forced. Blazes and I canss watch over the frost wyrmss and the castless. There iss no reasons for the ssSarax to returns to the crater now.

  Knowing that Crimzon wasn’t disappointed in him didn’t make Jenka feel any better. Nevertheless, he and Jade stayed around only long enough to double check their saddle strappings and load up some gear. After that they were winging north, just as Crimzon told them to.

  Chapter 17

  Aikira wanted desperately to go to Indale and seek out the man she loved, but sense kept her from it. She’d left Weldon Gimmerwick the previous spring, after she met Golden, but she would always love him. Now spring was turning again, but it wasn’t green growth she was seeing around her, it was cobble gutters full of blood. She wanted to be on her dragon’s back, not trudging around Delton on foot. Things had to be done, though. If the Outlands were to be defended, then the Dragoneers needed to work with the witches and the stubborn druid king, or whatever he was.

  Aikira didn’t like the man they called King Blanchard. She did like the guardsman who was always at his side, though. Rolph was clever and funny.
She didn’t understand why Mysterian and the other witches seemed to despise him. It was for him that she was out gathering certain supplies that he said they needed. She had no idea why he wanted a small tusk of ivory and a full set of carving tools, but she was returning with them now.

  The common area of the inn Queen Alvazina and her witches had commandeered was in full disarray when Aikira stepped into the warm, smoky room. There was King Blanchard laid out on a table, surrounded by hovering old crones and a huge road warden.

  The road wardens were the justice of the Outlands, and the man’s presence sent warning shivers up Aikira’s spine. They answered to none save for the four councils of elected and appointed officials who ran each of the Outland cities. Delton was the center of population, and leaders from the other three cities were all gathered there to discuss the increasing Sarax attacks.

  “He’s a big bastard,” Rikky said, drawing Aikira’s attention away from the table. “Do the wardens really hang people from tower poles?”

  “They do if they’re found guilty of murder,” she answered. “In Indale there was only one hanging when I was growing up. A man took a girl into the woods and had his way. He dangled until the crows picked him clean. I’d bet my boots that his bones are still in a pile underneath, unless the wolves carried them away.”

  “The ink!” Rolph exclaimed suddenly. Aikira and half the room looked at him. He was standing by King Blanchard with one finger tracing the mahogany colored triangle on the king’s current head and the other pointing in the air triumphantly.

  “Linux is a madman,” Rikky observed casually. “But I like him.”

  “Rolph?” Aikira asked.

  “Linux is in Rolph’s body.” Rikky shrugged, as if explaining would be next to impossible. “Linux is too powerful to hang from a pole for murder, though.”

  “If it is the ink, we be in heaps of it,” Mysterian chimed in from the doorway. “Lanxe and the rest of them druids’ll have been affected, too.”

  Rikky looked at Aikira and she knew what he was thinking before he said it.

  “Zahrellion has those tattoos.” Rikky was suddenly worried for her.

  “What were you compelled to do?” Mysterian loomed in with Queen Alvazina over Linux’s body. “If we know what it’s after, maybe we can thwart it.”

  King Blanchard snarled up at them irritably. “It already got what it wanted.” He let the words out like a sigh. The depth of unease he was feeling as he recalled the sensation was clearly evident. “It’s loose now, and it’s not one of those foul flying alien things that’ve been attacking. Those things are just this’n’s food. This is their master. Now, get me out of this druid’s skin, Mysterian, or I will haunt you and your kin until the days cease to turn. We have to save those that Richard left behind. We owe these Outlanders nothing.”

  “Not yet.” She grinned at his grit. Her eyes were wild, and red from sniffling over Herald. “We need Linux’s knowledge of the ways of Dou, and we don’t want him falling under that sort of influence. I can’t swap you back just yet.”

  “They extracted blood from the Sarax we held captive,” Rolph lectured to no one in particular. “They used it when they brewed the vat of pigment for the sacred ink because it changes tones as different levels of self-acceptance cause brain fluids to change paraximia. All of the acolytes are tattooed as they enter the Order. They—”

  “Shut it, man,” King Blanchard snapped. “Use those muscles and get these fargin’ witches away from me. You stole my fargin’ me, man! You owe me loyalty at the least.”

  Linux, in Rolph’s able body, couldn’t help but comply.

  The gigantic thing that emerged from the open drawbridge-type door of the star ship was ready to stretch its legs. It had many of them at times, some retracting completely inside its bulk, while others extended like tentacles. Most of the limbs ended in three opposable claws, but a few looked like barbed spikes. Blue and purple veins showed through the alien’s thin milky skin, as if it were parchment thin. The thing was hairless, and its blood so cold that it was comfortable in the late winter, deep-mountain climate. As it moved about, it pulled and stretched itself until it was formed into a massive pug-faced canine shape, as tall as four men at the shoulder, and twice as long, with two lower fangs jutting up over the upper part of its snout on either side. It had studied this world through the eyes of its drones. It was seeing it now through huge orbs as shiny as a polished steel shield reflecting the sunset, and full of sparkling shimmers of scarlet and ruby. It knew the humans were vulnerable, but it had a deep fear of the High Dracus, so it was wary.

  The Sarax, as man called them, were in truth only this super-adaptable monster’s self-regenerating food source, but once they entered this world’s atmosphere and morphed, they somehow began to draw the lesser bipeds to their will, and grew harder to control. The master alien had some control over them still, but not nearly as much as it had over the things in their first stage of being. The master alien had been content in its ship, living better in the controlled climate than it would in the long summers of this land. The planet’s magnetic pull powered the star ship well. After it made the girl let the Sarax loose, though, there was no choice. It had to come out and feed.

  Exercising what proximal control it had over the Sarax, the alien began thrumming out a deep, resonant buzz. Soon a Sarax was circling close. The alien waited patiently. When the Sarax was about thirty feet away, a long sticky wad of gray-green tongue shot out of its mouth. It snatched the buzzing morsel and retracted with a snap. A moment later, the alien spat a grisly steaming chunk of wing-skin and cartilage into a snowdrift before bounding away, feeling somewhat excited to be uncooped after so many decades.

  The alien had no terrible designs for man. Not yet. It was well entertained by the things they did to each other, though, and it longed to taste them. The sheer joy the Sarax felt when they ravished a human body was intense, so much so that the alien often intruded into their minds and savored the feelings that assailed them when they were feeding.

  Human nature was harder to control than other things, but not by much. The men who worshiped the planet and marked their skin with injected fluids were wise, inquisitive, and careful at first. It was only a matter of time before one of them came along who was weak enough to break. After that, it was just a matter of persistence.

  The alien loped south, in long ground-eating strides. It leapt and hopped and jumped through the mountainous terrain as if it had lived there all its life. Soon it came to the valley that sheltered the place the humans called Kingsmen’s Keep. There were men outside standing guard, but they were nothing. Neither was the thick, half-buried block structure that formed the place.

  The alien commanded its unseen followers with a shift in the pitch of the noise it emitted. Soon the men outside the keep were battling with a Sarax, and then a band of trellkin came out of the forest and joined in. Not far away, a pair of ogres were attacked where they were halfheartedly standing guard over the human stronghold. It was a rout. The three men who didn’t make it into the closing doors were killed by the Sarax and then consumed. Antlered trollish creatures came wandering around aimlessly, with little idea how to get at what was inside the manmade structure.

  Inside the keep, there is an elevated lookout loft. From outside the mostly underground structure, the position is undetectable. From inside, Ranger Malvin Woodholm, the sentry on duty, could see in the cardinal directions and across the valley. Malvin was pressed to the viewing slot as he tried to see what was happening outside. The commander was yelling, the old Camille mother was yelling at him, too. They wanted to know what was outside, but he couldn’t see what the men were all riled up about. Then a Sarax swept past his limited rectangle of vision and a cold gust stung his eyes. He blinked and ignored the chaos in the room below, and then looked again. At first he thought a giant snow ball was rolling at them, or perhaps it was an avalanche. Then a long thin strand of whatever it was shot out and latched a hold of something. A momen
t later, Malvin saw an ogre go across his field of vision as if it were flying. The big green-skinned thing was pulled into a huge undulating maw. He realized then that the massive white bulk he was seeing was no bank of snow. It was something terrible. He would have rung the alarm bells, but they were already ringing on their own. This stopped him cold for a heartbeat. The ground was shaking.

  He looked around and called down to the commander, but the ranger captain and the old Camille woman were moving away. He looked back out the embrasure and all he could see was the white, milky behemoth; then the whole keep began to quake, and a sound so low and terrible that it shook his guts wailed forth.

  Part of the keep went tearing away in a sky-revealing crumble. Bitter-cold air came rushing in. Men screamed, and the few women left at the keep huddled in fear. Below the lookout, people were scrambling about trying to avoid the falling blocks and masonry.

  Nothing had ever breached the keep before, and now it was only half there. Above, a massive bulk of pale-fleshed monster looked down with bright, fiery eyes that reflected the clear blue of the sky in their depths. Then it began to feed. Like leg-thick vines, tentacles came reaching into the opening and plucked squirming men right out of their tracks.

  Mother Camille stepped back into view and Malvin felt a bit of hope as he remembered her boy was one of the Dragoneers. Surely they would come and put an end to this. The old woman called up at him. “Get on, man. The keep’s not a safe—” Then a stark white rope wrapped around her face and she was lifted and twisted violently into the sky by the neck. Malvin watched helplessly as she was crushed, and then thrown into the terrifying thing’s great mouth. Malvin crumpled to his knees as the trolls and Sarax came storming into the opening. He reached for a weapon, but it was no use. He knew that in a matter of moments, he too would be consumed.