“I’ll need some blood.” She snarled her distaste for what she was about to do.
“There’s a lake of it at your feet,” King Richard shot back.
“I need your blood, fool!” She spat at him. “If you want that hell-born thing bound to you, I do.”
“Bah!” He nicked his thumb on his blade without moving it away from the woman’s neck. Then he pulled the girl by the sleeve of her robe as he inched over to Mysterian. He squeezed a few drops onto the onyx orb when Mysterian indicated for him to do so.
“Come, my sister,” Mysterian said to the queen. “Your husband needs you. This thing is no longer your son.”
The queen did as she was told by the superior of her coven.
“My father needs to disappear,” Richard snapped. “No one will believe the druids. Not after I expose them for what they really are. Now, call the Nightshade to me!”
“Very well,” Mysterian snarled. “But the druids care not what you, or the people of the kingdom believe. They have an agenda of their own.” She tilted her face down and started chanting then. She knew that this type of radiant magic would most likely draw the attention of the huge freakish creature Herald had saved her from at the temple.
It seemed like nothing was happening, but then all of a sudden the orb in her hands took on a deep cherry glow. Mysterian said a few words to direct her sending to the one of hellish descent. Then she bound the creature by name and blood to the prince when it responded to the mysterious call.
“It is done,” the eldest witch of the Hazeltine crumpled with the weight and fatigue of the powerful casting.
“I know you are no liar,” Richard spoke down to her. “When will it come?”
“It is coming even now,” she grunted, and with the help of the mortified queen she regained her feet. “No more than a day, I would guess. Now let her go.”
“Take my mother and the rest of your brood and get as far away from this kingdom as you can.” Richard’s intense gaze only softened when his eyes landed briefly on his mother. For the others, those blood-red orbs held little more than contempt. After the witches were gone, he had a man bring out his new armor. Once he was suited in the dull blackened steel, he went to the top of Mainsted’s central tower and sat on a parapet sharpening his sword.
Herald had just finished breaking his fast and was emerging into the daylight to find Commander Stark when two ogres came loping out of the trees outside Kingsmen’s Keep. One of them narrowly dodged an arrow that a startled ranger fired. Several captains, and the new commander himself, called out to hold their bowstrings. Three more ogres eased into the open yard then.
While the hulking green-skinned creatures tried to bark and grunt out something to the rangers, one of the Sarax attacked them all. It came sweeping over the treetops on extended wings and then dipped into the clearing, hitting an ogre in the head and chest with its terrible razor-sharp claws. In a matter of heartbeats half the yard was saturated in blood.
Herald crumpled under a deep vibrating claxon sounding off in his brain. This wasn’t the dull groan that had irritated him while the thing attacked the temple. This was a powerful sound that twanged the old ranger’s tendons and bones. He looked up to see one of the ogres swing a solid haymaker that staggered the huge creature. It was bashed to the side and forgotten as the monster leaned down and snapped its jaws shut on an archer. Legs kicked and spasmed, then fell away from the creature as they were gnashed until they separated from the man’s body.
As tall as three men, with arms the size of branches and legs as big as stumps, the Sarax caught its balance with a snap of its wings. It opened its big, toothy maw and let out a gut-shaking roar. Then it proceeded to kill and consume everything it could get hold of while arrows bounced harmlessly from its thick, hardened skin.
With every passing moment the sound the creature was emitting grew in intensity. Herald tried to run for the keep, but his muscles responded like water. All around him there was chaos. Rangers were trying to close up the keep, but others wanted to save the men outside. Herald could barely think. There was blood everywhere. Then the thing loomed its head near him to snatch up a morsel of ogre flesh it had missed. The King’s Ranger held his breath and felt his blood freeze in his veins when the fiery amber slits in those dead black eyes narrowed on him. After that, he clenched his eyes shut and waited to feel the terrible teeth that were about to tear him apart. It was all he was able to do.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What if they went in three different directions?” Rikky called out to Jenka over the rush of the wind. They were flying west at a brisk clip. The wind was sweeping down off of the mountains behind them. The dragons were gladly riding the gales in a swift, soaring glide. Rikky was tired of flying and wondering. When he concentrated on his new dragon tear, its power gave him a certain confidence. He and the Dragoneers were going to kill the three Sarax. He knew this as if it were chiseled in stone. Whether they would have to fight a thousand more of them was up to the dragon, Crimzon. Rikky hoped the fire wyrm had made it to the crater and was reinforcing the encasement. Then he wondered how Crimzon would get there. This had him convinced that he wanted to learn how to vanish away like the Hazeltines and some of the druids could. He was restless and fidgety, but in truth all he wanted to do was find a Sarax and try to kill it, just to know that they could.
Jade slid in close to Silva. “We’ll hunt them down one at a time if we have to, Rik,” Jenka called back his response. “I think we’d do best to face them like that. Two or three of them at once might be more than we can handle.”
“I think we should attack them like Crimzon said they got him.” Marcherion joined the conversation by gliding Blaze’s great bulk over the two smaller dragons and their riders and calling down to them. His brown hair was wild and long and he had to fight to keep it out of his face when he looked any way save for ahead. “I think one will be more than we can handle, but if we swarm it, maybe we can distract it so that one of us gets a clean go at that soft spot Lemmy pointed out.”
Rikky thought it was a great idea, but the mention of Lemmy made Jenka’s expression grow grim. Rikky felt it, too. He’d known Lemmy all of his life, but he wasn’t as certain as Jenka of their half-elvish friend’s death. Lemmy could hide in a band of trolls.
“We should make a plan,” Jenka decided out loud. “They devastated the temple. If Zahrellion were well, I’d suggest her for the first try at it. I saw her nearly blast a mudged red as big as Blaze out of the sky once. I can still hear the buzzing in my ears. It caused my—”
“What?” Rikky yelled.
Rikky suddenly couldn’t hear anymore. Jenka was obviously being affected by a buzzing in his ears too. The sound whined and burbled and then went into an angry grind. Rikky saw that Marcherion was rubbing at the side of his head as well. Could it be one of the Sarax?
“Aikira!” Rikky suddenly screamed at the girls, who were flying parallel a few hundred feet away. He urged Silva toward them. The silver wyrm responded by streaking away on swift, undulating wing beats. “Zah! Aikira!” Rikky called as he neared them.
Quickly, he searched the sky for anything, but saw nothing resembling the freakish Sarax.
When Aikira looked over at him she put her hand over her eyes to shade them from the setting sun. Her bright, toothy smile contrasted starkly with her dark skin. The gleam from her golden helmet was almost blinding. The terror that slowly formed in her expression reached Rikky’s attention the same moment a Sarax dropped out of the clouds overhead and plucked him from his seat by the shoulders. The next thing he knew he was tumbling toward the colorful lush carpet of treetops below, hot wet life spilling from his wide open wounds, his heart so far in his throat he could taste the blood it was pumping.
Marcherion hadn’t felt the need to assert himself very much yet, at least not until he saw the Sarax snatch and drop Rikky. Blaze was big, but his bulk shot down toward the treetops as if he were launched from a crossbow. They sped toward a p
oint a score of feet below Rikky, but in his direct trajectory, and then Blaze rolled sideways. The big red wyrm caught Rikky’s armor vest in a claw for a moment, then the material gave way. The youngest Dragoneer spun limply down the short distance through the canopy of autumn leaves. The Sarax started moving that way, but two warbling blasts of concussive energy exploded into it. March wasn’t surprised to see that Zahrellion and Aikira were both on the attack.
The Sarax tumbled and spun on a wing that looked twisted out of shape. Before it was even half way to the ground it roared out angrily and snapped away in a gut-punching boom that reminded Marcherion of a thunder clap.
March looked everywhere, but the Sarax was gone.
He turned around, scanning the sky, trying to locate the others. The irritating sound in his head ceased all together. He saw that Jenka and Jade were going down after Rikky. Then he saw the Sarax reappear, just above and behind the girls.
There was no time to warn them. Blaze knew it too. The powerful dragon was churning his wings as hard as he could to get there. March didn’t even try to yell. The buzz had returned and was twice as loud and irritating as it had been before. He thrust his hand forward pointing his finger behind them. Aikira craned her neck and saw it. She pulled up, but not in time. Crystal snaked her neck out and sent a blast of icy spew across the creature’s upper body, but it still crashed into Golden and knocked Aikira out of her seat. The ebon girl was dexterous and her arms were strong enough to hold her against the forces that were threatening to sling her away from her wyrm. A second later, Golden righted herself giving Aikira the chance she needed to get herself back into place.
Silva streaked by and raked a trio of gashes across the Sarax’s shoulder up its neck. Crystal came down on the thing hard right after her, and with her powerful claws, she grabbed hold of it. That turned out to be a mistake as the alien beast’s skin flared bright yellow and appeared to shock both Zahrellion and her dragon into immediate unconsciousness. Luckily, they were just above the treetops and didn’t have far to fall.
The thing was seeping thick black blood from the wounds Silva had inflicted. It lurched forward on its nimble wings and tried to grab at Aikira when she passed. Her dragon sent a flash of retina-searing brightness into the Sarax’s face. The sound that cut through their heads then was long and terrible, and it only worsened when Marcherion and Blaze snapped into a hover just above the flash-blinded alien and began bathing it in Blaze’s searing dragon’s fire.
It wasn’t clear how much damage was done, because the Sarax disappeared from under the molten shower of flame before it was killed, but Marcherion thought he saw one of the thing’s wings shriveling. He never saw fear in its expression, of that he was certain. Either way, he was glad that his head wasn’t full of buzzing anymore, but he was angry. Their leader and his magic sword were nowhere to be seen.
March and Blaze began circling the sky, watching Aikira and Sylva, who were making passes over the trees searching for the others. He half expected the thing to return with its friends, but it never did.
Jenka and Jade crashed haphazardly down into the trees near Rikky. Silva saw them. She landed right behind Jade, scrambled her small body around the trees to her Dragoneer, and began licking his face worriedly. Rikky laughed and groaned and then laughed some more. He was crying too, Jenka knew. Not only was Rikky’s peg-leg lying ten paces from where Rikky was, the shaft that made the length of the artificial limb was broken off. The worn stump of flesh that was normally in the extension’s sleeve was an angry red pucker. Jenka couldn’t imagine the pain his friend was feeling.
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t know anymore, Jenk,” Rikky’s forced mirth died away as Aikira’s yellow-scaled wyrm stalled into a hover over them. Her expression was grim.
“Zahrellion’s busted up pretty badly,” the ebon girl yelled to them. “Crystal says she can fly, but Zah’s out of it. They aren’t far away.”
“Help me back onto my dragon, Jenka,” said Rikky. “I’ll go give her a look.”
They moved over to where Zah was lying and Jenka helped Rikky dismount again. Jenka watched as Rikky took his time working on Zah from a crawling position. He was too concerned for Zahrellion to be impressed by Rikky’s dragon tear-fortified healing abilities, but they didn’t escape his notice.
Zahrellion didn’t have any extra broken bones as far as Rikky could tell, and he reported that the healing spell he cast on her was far more potent than he’d expected it to be. He struggled for the words to tell Jenka that the teardrop magnified his work tenfold. Jenka had a teardrop too, so he understood.
The sun disappeared, but the sky was still amber and pink, offering enough illumination for the Dragoneers to see.
“Where were the green streaks?” Marcherion came stalking through the woods to where they were sitting around Zahrellion. His dragon had set him down and was back in the sky on guard. He looked angry. “Well?” Marcherion threw up his arms when no one responded.
“What are you talking about?” Aikira asked from her perch on a fallen trunk.
With Jenka’s help, Rikky mounted again. Silva was snaked out on the ground, resting. Rikky would have been sitting beside Zahrellion, still comforting her, but the idea of the Sarax returning made him want to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice; something he wouldn’t be able to do if he were on the ground with the others. Jenka decided they would have to get another peg-leg somehow, and soon.
“The green streaks that nearly killed me when Jenka’s sword went off on the way into Crimzon’s lair,” March snapped. “We need you to fight, Jenka. Use what you have. That sword might have killed it.”
“I didn’t want to lose where I saw Rikky hit the trees,” Jenka met Marcherion’s gaze levelly. “But yeah, I hear you.” He forced a thin smile. It was clear he hadn’t avoided the skirmish out of fear or anything like that.
They stared at each other for a long moment, but Marcherion’s expression faded from anger to understanding, as a memory of Brendly crossed his mind. With a shrug of resigned understanding he let it go.
“I haven’t heard buzzing like that since Solman and Grondy led us into Hornet Hollow, over by Weston, that one time,” Rikky tried to tactfully change the subject.
“Weston?” Marcherion turned at the mention of his last name. “What do you mean ‘Weston’?”
“Weston is—Well, Weston was a farming town that Gravelbone and his trellkin sacked a few months ago,” Rikky answered.
“Weston is the name my father gave me,” March explained his interest.
“Did you have relatives that sailed away on a ship called the Dogma a few hundred years ago?” Aikira asked.
Jenka wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. Rikky had just given him an idea that could make killing the Sarax easier than any of them expected—at least one of them. “We have to go there,” Jenka said suddenly. “The Sarax came at us, way out here away from anywhere. They will come at us again. I don’t think the Outlands are where they are going, though. I think they are stalking us. Or maybe they are after our dragon tears. I can’t figure it.”
“I think they just want to kill us,” said Rikky.
“We’re going to the Outlands, Jenka,” Aikira’s tone brooked no argument. “After these eyes see that Indale is safe, then we can move on.”
“That’s fine,” Jenka agreed. “We need to get some supplies, and enough rations for one of us to hole up for a while over by Weston. Can we get toadflax in Indale?” The last question was directed at Aikira. She shrugged as if she had no idea what the stuff was.
“What do you mean hole up by Weston?” Zahrellion asked as she sat up slowly. “Crimzon said we’re not supposed to get separated.”
The spell Rikky had cast on her had to be powerful, because the swelling from her older injuries had lessened considerably. Jenka decided that, even with a purple and blue bruised face to go with her silver tattoo, she was as pretty as ever, but her beauty didn’t take his mind off of
the task at hand.
“Rikky gave me an idea.” Jenka stood and thought about it a moment before continuing. “We have to turn the tables on the Sarax. We can’t just fly around and look for them. We have to draw them to us.”
“Now you’re talking my language.” Marcherion nodded.
“After we rest, we go to Indale and stock up,” Jenka re-voiced the plan to make it official. “Two of us can go all the way in. The others can rest or watch over us from the sky.”
Seeing Aikira hug herself from the chill, March went and started gathering wood for a fire. Jenka shook his head at the noble, but unnecessary gesture. Before March gathered his second piece, Zahrellion cast a hissing blue druid’s fire into being. It was hot enough to keep the deep mountain chill off of them while Jenka figured out exactly what they were going to do after they left Indale.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Herald waited for the blow, or the bite, to end him, but it didn’t come. Instead, he heard a voice sounding crazily over the terrible noise of flesh being ripped and chewed before him. There were no words being spoken, but he recognized the voice anyway. It was Kember’s elvish friend, Lemmy. He’d heard the strange golden-haired bastard make those very same animalistic sounds when he was culling strays from an elk herd by scaring the piss out of them.
Herald looked toward the call and was just in time to see a deep blue sphere of druid’s fire form in Lemmy’s hands. It went streaking at the creature, which was still right in front of Herald. He somehow found the presence of mind to crab walk away backward toward the keep. There was still a contingent of maybe six rangers loosing arrows from the open doorway. Only one or two men remained alive outside, but those in the entry were not willing to leave them just yet. An ogre, with a severe gash across its middle, limped toward them, but visibly deflated when it realized it was too big to fit through the stronghold’s entrance.
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