Chapter Twenty-Two
Herald was arguing with Mysterian and King Blanchard in a labyrinth-like hedge garden that boasted a sacrificial altar at its center. The area was sizable, and by the indentions in the soil out away from the center, Herald reasoned that hundreds of people had gathered round the slab on many occasion. It was clear that the huge block of stone wasn’t just ornamental. Flies buzzed greedily over its rough, red-stained surface. The skulls of several different types of animals were littered around its base, including troll heads and several smaller goblin gourds. Herald saw one bit of old yellowed dome that he knew for certain was human and another that might have been ogre or orc.
Herald didn’t like it at the temple. The Druids were shifty and there was far more than met the eye going on there. Mysterian’s constant concern over the loss of the ethereal and Prince Richard’s betrayal had her anxious and edgy. She had dearly loved the Crown Prince. His severe actions after being revived hurt her, and more importantly, scared her. She was afraid and confused just enough to keep her from being her normally collected, ever-scheming self. Herald decided that an anxious witch didn’t make for good company. He was at the end of his tether with frustration. He couldn’t pin down what it was about the creepy temple that was bothering him because of her worries. It was maddening.
Some of the servants he’d seen roaming the grounds had the look of ravers about them. They moved along about their labors, slumped over in a slow methodical daze. With dead eyes and emotionless posture, they seemed aware of no other purpose than to serve the druids.
“We need to find them Dragoneers,” Mysterian said again, adding an elbow to jab Herald out of his thoughts. “Listen to the king.”
“I’m not against it,” Herald said. He’d been lobbying to take a party to Kingsmen’s Keep to see about his fellow King’s Rangers. He saw no point in sending men deeper into the mountains.
King Blanchard agreed. “They said they’d be returnin’ here, though, and they will,” he told Mysterian again.
Appearing seemingly from nowhere, Lanxe joined them, and speaking more to the king than the others, the High Druidon changed the subject. “Things are happening that require your attention, Majesty.”
With a glare and a raised hand, Herald stopped Mysterian from engaging the High Druidon so that he could ask a question. He marveled at the perfect resemblance of the two. Linux looked exactly like his twin brother. “Do those men with the dead eyes serve the Order of Dou willingly, or have you scrambled their thinkers?”
Lanxe gave a disdainful smile, as if he were being polite to a belligerent child. “Ask them. They’re not mute.” Then to the king, “Come Highness, there are others waiting to start work on the spells that will make people see you as you were. We have much work to do, Ranger. If you will excuse us.” He dismissed Herald by shouldering past him as he led the king away. Over his shoulder, Lanxe made a nasty snarl, but spoke in a kindly enough voice. He said, “It’s no easy task to make one look like someone we have never seen.”
Herald felt a flash of panic then. One what? Again, whatever it was that was bothering him eluded realization. He knew his instinct was right, though. It was always right. There was something sinister happening around him. Already Mysterian was pulling on his sleeve trying to get his attention. He was about to snap at her when several cries of panic rang out from another part of the temple grounds. Herald got a glimpse of what had them screaming when a savage-looking twelve-foot-tall winged beast hurled the body of a druida across the yard like a stone. It didn’t have much of a head, just a snouted protrusion from its shoulders with cold black eyes and a huge toothy maw underneath. Herald shuddered as he watched it devour a man in three chomping gulps. After that, his years of experience ranging the Orich Mountains took over and he literally dragged Mysterian away from the temple.
Lanxe was giddy. He was in a position that he’d never expected to be in. Even more satisfying was the fact that an idea of how he could use the situation to gain the power of the entire kingdom of men had presented itself as if a gift from Dou. Lanxe wasn’t all that angry about the death of his brother Linux, but revenge was still one of his motives as he led King Blanchard to his demise.
The Sarax attacked just as the doors to an underground section of the temple boomed shut behind the High Druidon and the king of men. Heavy beams were worked through iron bands by a uniformed troop of soldiers with bulging muscles. The king hadn’t noticed the beast, but it was no surprise to Lanxe. Many years ago, the druids had taken one of the things. Its dissected body was deep in the dungeons under the temple. They had been working on an incantation that would bind the alien beasts to the will of the caster for decades. In secret, Lanxe and his cronies had been studying other aspects of the Sarax, too. Linux, with the backing of the elder druids, Vax Noffa, and the witches of the Hazeltine, had forbidden such experimentation. But with Linux dead, and the eldest of the Hazeltine about to be Sarax scat, Lanxe knew that he’d done well to proceed. Once the link of control was established it was only a matter of sneaking someone into the crater to destroy the crystal that was encasing the creatures. The fact that Vax Noffa and the half-elvish mute had to die in the process was more of a boon than a loss.
“You and you, go out there and fetch the witch,” Lanxe ordered a pair of the blue-robed druids who were waiting in the opulent chamber they’d just entered. A few of the other blue-robes moved plush chairs around a small golden altar and then seated Lanxe and his twin directly facing each other in the middle.
“Why am I facing you? I thought I was the one being illusionated.” King Blanchard was starting to sense something, Lanxe feared, but the king’s eagerness to look like himself again turned out to be stronger than the alarm.
“None of us have ever seen how you look, Majesty,” Lanxe said, with just enough reverence in his tone to be convincing. “I must search your mind and see how you saw yourself. You’ve looked into a glass before?”
The king nodded.
“All I need is to see a memory of that moment, but moreover I can get a feel for your demeanor and the subtleties that made you feel like you.”
“Very well then,” King Blanchard agreed. All around him candles were being lit and a strange coppery smell filled the air.
His head was then gently pulled back into the headrest by a man standing behind him. Lanxe began chanting, as did several of the other druids, who were now sitting in a circle around them. After only a few verses of the repetitive mantra, the king’s head lolled to the side.
King Blanchard felt Lanxe enter his consciousness; he also felt his wrists and ankles being strapped to the chair he was in. He tried to struggle but his body wouldn’t respond.
Lanxe began examining King Blanchard in the most intimate of ways, from the inside of his mind. Soon, he would know all there was to know about the man.
It didn’t take long for the king to understand what was happening. Why? He asked with the voice inside his head.
Because I can, replied Lanxe. Because I can.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Herald had to wrestle Mysterian into the deep ocher forest south of the Temple of Dou. It was clear that the beast attacking the druids was some sort of winged and upright trollish thing that did terrible damage to the mostly defenseless men it chose to kill. A grinding, buzzing sound that was barely audible, yet surprisingly irritating, filled his head. Herald saw that two blue-robed druids were stalking fearlessly through the carnage, ignoring the pleas of their dying brethren around them. They weren’t clutching at their ears like many of the others so close to the beast were, either. They were searching for someone, Herald decided, and he was fairly certain it was him and the Eldest of the Hazeltine.
“Come, Mysty,” he whispered. He pulled her into a thicket, rolled them under some trees, and hugged her close to his chest while cupping a hand over her mouth. He let her breathe, but her every attempt to speak was averted with a sharp press of his palm, her every wiggle smothered in an urg
ent hug.
They huddled like that for several hours, as the sky slowly darkened, and autumn’s chill gathered bite. For the first few hours they heard the screams of the dying. The huge beast was eating people alive. It galled Herald to leave them be, but he did it. He knew that King Blanchard was in a fix. His instinct was to get to the keep and rally the rangers. What to rally them around was a question he would have to soon answer.
Once he was certain that the creature had moved on, Herald led Mysterian slowly up a sloped wooded area and didn’t stop when they topped the ridge. It was freezing and the sweat of their laborious climb had their breath escaping in huge, bilious clouds.
When they stopped once, Mysterian actually cackled out a laugh because steam was rising from Herald’s grizzled head. Her wits were returning to her. The idea that Prince Richard was fully corrupted by Gravelbone’s taint had set in, and she no longer grieved for his soul. Linux, she missed, but only marginally. The beast affecting the ethereal was only one of the concerns that was suddenly churning through her old witchy brain.
“How far are we going in this cold?” Mysterian asked just before the sun started to lighten the sky.
Herald was so cold he’d forgotten he was cold. “Two days if we rest little,” he mumbled.
“Are we going to Kingsmen’s Keep?” she asked.
Through his shivering he nodded. She spoke a word he didn’t know, then stepped up and hugged him close. After a bright, stark white flash filled his mind like a thunderclap, he found he was still standing against Mysterian, but in the open yard outside the keep. Two men with bows fully drawn were looking at them wide-eyed from their post outside the heavy wooden door.
“’Tis Master Herald and the witch,” the voice of an unseen ranger called down from a lookout in the trees. The rangers guarding the entry relaxed.
“Some evil beast has attacked the temple, but I think they are aligned with the druids somehow. Them druids have King Blanchard, too.” Herald chattered to the men. He was still hugging Mysterian and she was thankful for what little warmth his body provided her. Fortunately they were ushered into the keep and fortified with warm stew in front of a roaring fire in the kitchens.
“I must return to King’s Isle, Herald, then Mainsted. I have to warn my sisters of this madness.” Mysterian didn’t want to part from the man she had come to care for so much, but she knew she had to go. “If what you say is true, if the druids are in league with that creature and are working to harm the kingdom, then—”
“I be not making it up, lass,” Herald spoke harshly, but his anger was over her needing to leave. It wasn’t directed at her. “Them blue-robed bastards walked right around the thing while it scooped up one of their fellows and took a bite. They showed no fear of it, them two. They weren’t hearing that infernal whine, neither. They knew it wouldn’t harm them aforehand or they’d have filled their britches and run. And that demon Lanxe gave me the look of the Destroyer himself when he said he was going to illusionate King Blanchard to look right again.” He paused to shake his head.
Hearing this, Mysterian pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I’ll be off then, love.” She rose from her seat and kissed his hairy face. “Tell that boy Rikky, you see him, to keep that peg on.” She started to cast her spell then, but stopped herself. “Tell that De Swasso boy, and them other Dragoneers to end that terrible thing, Herald. It’s not of this world. It will destroy us.” With that she kissed him again and swirled away into a cloud of silvery sparkles.
Herald knew he would miss her company, but he was no less glad that she was gone. Now he could at least start reasoning this mess into order.
“We go to the Outlands!” Aikira said firmly.
After seeing that they were too late to save the people of the Temple of Dou, Zahrellion was anguished. Her head was still hugely swollen and her sense of balance off-kilter. Not a soul moved in the blood-soaked gardens and orchards below. Sickly sensations of revulsion and sorrow churned in her gut like a flu.
They landed away from the carnage to let the dragons go feed. The other Dragoneers were arguing over whether the Sarax would go to Kingsmen’s Keep, or the Outlands next. Zahrellion just wanted to vomit.
Marcherion didn’t seem to care. He’d been hungry to find and see one of the Sarax firsthand, but after seeing what the creatures left of the temple dwellers, he couldn’t act as certain anymore. Zah found she wasn’t as attracted to him as she first thought she was. She didn’t have room for that sort of emotion anyway. She still refused to think about Jenka, but he interjected himself into her thoughts anyway.
“There’s help at the keep,” Jenka argued. “Experienced frontiersmen, not deserters and pirates.”
“There are thousands and thousands of people in the city of Indale alone,” the golden-helmeted girl shot right back. “None of them are pirates, I assure you, Jenk.”
“We could split up and cover both,” March offered.
More than one of the Dragoneers made a sharp, “No” at that.
“We have to stick together, like Crimzon said.” Jenka wouldn’t argue that part of it.
“The rangers can wait, Jenk,” Rikky tried to settle it. “They can hole up deep if they need to.”
“All right,” Jenka finally conceded. “After the dragons feed and sleep we go to the Outlands, but we are hunting Sarax. If the trail leads us elsewhere, we must follow.”
“Agreed,” Rikky and Aikira said in unison.
“I agree, too,” Marcherion added.
“And I,” Zahrellion’s voice was soft and thick with emotion. She was not only grieving the loss of so many of her white-robed peers, people she’d known and lived with for most of her life, she was wondering why none of the Order of Dou’s blue or red-robed druids were lying tattered in the blood-soaked valley. Besides the few ogres, and numerous workers, she only remembered seeing white, brown, and black-robed corpses littering the temple grounds.
She half wanted to go back and take a closer look at the temple itself. There was a hidden way in, and underground rooms leading to the inner sanctum where the elders worshipped. Surely people were hiding inside. She wanted to do something, but she was so dizzy now that she could do little more than loll against Rikky and slurp the broth he’d made for her. Soon she was deeply asleep. There were no unicorns or fairy mounds in her dreams, though. Her slumber was realized in a slew of dismembered childhood friends all floating in a sludge of blood and bone.
She woke and barely raised her head before her stomach emptied. Rikky and Jenka were at her side in a heartbeat, but Aikira shooed them away and sang them all back to sleep. After that, Zah’s dreams were as empty as the ethereal.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Summon the Nightshade to me or one of you will die!” would-be King Richard ordered the three witches of the Hazeltine before him. He’d had them rousted from their homes and brought to the throne room at Mainsted. They were not pleased, but they were sworn to serve the Crown. There was little they could do.
“We will all die eventually,” one of them said calmly. “As will you one day, my Prince.”
“I am king now! And didn’t your eldest just bring me back from the dead?” Richard looked to his mother, who was also a witch of the Hazeltine, for help. “The Confliction is upon us. Tell them.”
“We feel it too,” one of the witches responded.
“We’ve lost our ethereal voices,” added another. “We couldn’t summon that vile thing if we wanted to.”
“Bah!” Richard whirled around with savage quickness. His sword sliced cleanly through the neck of the oldest witch of the three. His queen mother gagged, and then vomited, as the head and body hit the floor and began spilling blood in thick, pulsing gushes.
The two remaining witches stepped back and huddled together, but not in fear as Richard hoped. One of them was holding a shielding spell before them while the other mustered the courage to cast an offensive spell.
“You’ve just broken the pact,” Que
en Alvazina pulled herself up from her knees and, after wiping the tears from her face on the hem of her sleeve, sat back in her hickory throne. “The Hazeltine are no longer bound to serve the kingdom.”
“What pact do you speak of? It will matter not who they serve, lest the Nightshade comes to do my bidding!”
“You’ve disappointed me,” Mysterian’s voice growled as she appeared in the throne room in a dramatic hissing of sparkles and pops. “You need reminding.” A blast of translucent yellow energy pulsed forth from her hand and knocked Richard to the floor. To her obvious surprise he took the magical blow well. Before she could voice another spell he had his sword at the youngest of the witches’ neck.
“Oh, Richard, no,” his mother sobbed. “Stop it. What has become of you?”
“Wait,” Mysterian said in a resigned voice that made Richard smile triumphantly. Richard knew her well. She could do what he wanted her to do. She’d just given it away.
“Mysterian, summon the Nightshade.” Richard puffed out his chest and teased the blade of his sword across the terrified witch’s throat. “Pretend you believe in me again. Summon the Nightshade, then take my mother and the rest of your crazy coven and get out of my kingdom.”
King Richard’s expression was one of sheer malice, and Mysterian knew that she should just do what he wanted so she could get the others away. It was what she had come for in any case. Knowing what she did about the other troubles brewing, she doubted the Nightshade and Richard would last long. “All right, I’ll do it,” she finally agreed.
“Do it now!”
Blood was running freely down the terrified woman’s neck. Mysterian reached into the bag of things she’d retrieved from her rooms before coming to the throne room. She pulled out a perfect sphere of black onyx the size of a child’s head and held it before her eyes.
Cold Hearted Son of a Witch: 2016 Modernized Format Edition (Dragoneers Saga) Page 12