The Sword and the Dragon (The Wardstone Trilogy Book One)

by M. R. Mathias

  Targon stopped, and cast a quick spell. Sizzling blue streaks leapt from his pointed fingers, not at the undead, but at the wood planking just in front of them. Loud thumping divots were shattered out of the wood, sending shrapnel-like splinters, and chunks, tearing through the decaying flesh of the undead. It slowed the foul things, but didn’t stop them completely.

  Vaegon, with Targon on his heels, reached the ramp just before the enemy did. They charged headlong down the slope, but it was too late. Halfway down the grade, a hammer blow had already struck the pins that held the wooden section of ramp in place. The man who had knocked out the pin, looked up with regret as the section fell away. It was all Targon could do to keep Vaegon from charging into the now empty space before him. As Vaegon teetered on the edge of a thirty-foot dead fall, the thick, palpable smell of the undead came washing up over them from behind.

  Hyden Hawk was brought awake by needle sharp teeth clamping down on his hand. He opened his eyes in a jolt of sheer terror. He felt hot, wet breath breathing down his neck, and he saw a skull face before him. With a scream, he jumped to his feet. His heart fluttered around his chest crazily.

  Excitedly, Talon fluttered down from the tree above, the hawkling’s wing beats adding to the thrumming sensation in Hyden’s breast. He nearly bolted off into the endless expanse of grassy hills that surrounded the tree and all its dead visitors. Only the merry laughter of two young wolf pups prancing at his feet stopped him. He recognized them immediately, but it took him a few minutes to calm himself, and wrench himself free of the terror that had overcome him. He had healed their mother in the ravine the same day that Loudin had been torn apart by the hellcat. With his breath finally under control, and his heartbeat steadied, he smiled down and greeted them.

  “Where is she?” asked Hyden.

  “At the door,” one of the pups answered.

  “Waiting for us,” added the other.

  They didn’t quite speak with words like the squirrels had, yet what they said was perfectly clear to Hyden. And the differences in them radiated with each of their personalities. They were both boys, young adolescent male Ridge Wolves, healthier than most, and fearlessly sure of themselves.

  “The Great Mother of the forest said you needed a guide,” the one called Rurran said.

  “We didn’t have to come,” his brother Arrah added. “But we wanted to, because you saved our mother.”

  “We would’ve gone hungry without her.” Rurran nuzzled against Hyden’s leg. “So you saved us too.”

  “It looks like nobody came for them.” Arrah nodded towards all the skeletons that ringed the base of the great tree.

  “Come, Hyden Hawk, follow us.”

  “What’s that bird’s name?”

  “Talon,” Hyden answered, with a hint of amazement and his voice.

  Hyden tried to recite the riddle as he followed the two frisky wolf pups, but it was impossible. The two curious youths told him excitedly how they had chased, and killed a field mouse, and had chased a badger into its burrow. They wouldn’t let his attention wander too far from them. Rurran made fun of Arrah for getting scared, but admitted that the badger had turned on them fiercely, and had scared him a little as well.

  Not long after he had healed her, the mother had led them to a cave up on the ridge. They said it had been full of the stink of men, but since they smelled that Hyden had been there, they knew they would be safe.

  Their mother had taken a doe, and they had gotten their first taste of red meat, and oh, how they loved meat. It was what they lived for now; they were on an eternal quest for meat. Hyden couldn’t help but laugh at them, laugh with them. They were sly, imaginative, and so full of life, that the joy that radiated from them was contagious.

  It took some time, an hour, half the day maybe, Hyden wasn’t sure. The only disruption of the landscape was a small stream-formed pond they came upon. Leaning against a boulder at its bank, was another skeleton, this one still garbed in a tattered scarlet robe. The pups only stopped long enough to drink, and then bounded off again. Hyden didn’t stop. There was nothing there that he wanted to see.

  In between the casual banter, and excited bursts of thought from the curious young wolves, Hyden pondered why the kingdom folk all called the lovely and polite Queen of Highwander, Willa the Witch Queen. She didn’t seem like a witch to him at all. The old crone who had told him and Gerard their fortunes: now that was witchy woman.

  He didn’t want think about how much he missed Gerard, it would only serve to spoil the fantastic mood the wolf pups had put him in, but he couldn’t help it. Luckily, they came upon the mother wolf, and his sadness didn’t get a chance to take root.

  She was lazing beside an ivory door that was set in a golden frame, and standing alone on a hilltop in the midst of the sea of rolling hills.

  He spotted a trio of skulls half buried in the thick turf, and a strange, crystal staff lay close at hand. Walking around it, Hyden couldn’t help but notice that the door looked exactly the same from both sides, but he ignored the odd portal, and the temptation to grab up the staff, and just enjoyed the company of the wolves and his familiar.

  The mother wolf commented about the scent of the Great Wolves that lingered on him, and he had to tell the pups the tale of Grrr, and how he had died to save King Mikahl from the Choska. Telling the story made him feel like Berda, and he sort of liked it. The story was sad, yet it made the pups proud of their kind. The mother wolf sensed the underlying urgency burning inside Hyden’s spirit, and carefully tempted the pups away, with the promise of a fresh meal. Hyden hugged them, and let them lick his face, and then watched with a conflicting well of emotion boiling inside him as they casually trotted away.

  Talon was perched atop the golden doorframe, patiently preening his feathers. The door inside the frame was slightly yellowed with age. Carved upon its face, was a glade set in a forest of tall pine trees, with mountains beyond them, and a little stream running through the foreground. As he stood there observing it, the trees might have swayed a bit, and maybe the stream gurgled and trickled. He didn’t let the hypnotic scene distract him though. His full concentration was on the riddle that the Dying Tree had told him.

  “A pyramid, a patterned knock, made up of only ten,

  If you start from the bottom, I will let you in.”

  He hoped he had it right. He said it as he remembered it in his head. About the fifteenth time he recited it, the answer came to him. It was so easy, that it was startling. So simple, and yet so easy to complicate, that it was no wonder that no one had ever returned from this place.

  A pyramid of ten: one, two, three, four, it added up to ten. From the bottom up, it was truly a pyramid: four, three, two, and one.

  With confidence, he rapped four times on the door. After a moment’s pause, he rapped three times, then two, and finally one. With the final knock, Talon fluttered from the doorframe to his shoulder.

  The door creaked open on a room, formed of the same white marble as the palace of Xwarda. The circular tower chamber was dark, but the cracks in the ill fitting window shutters were letting in the wavering orange glow of some distant raging inferno.

  Hyden knew he was in Pratchert’s Tower now, for on the floor, was a thick, lush rug, made from the skin of an arctic bear. It was the same arctic bear that Pratchert’s father had killed for his King a few hundred years ago.

  Chapter 55

  The Choska demon’s mouth came snapping down at Mikahl, but a great white bundle of furred aggression leapt into the space between him and those slavering jaws. The teeth still found his flesh, but their force was blunted by the wolf’s breaking body. Grrr had sacrificed himself, and the sorrow Mikahl felt for the loss of such a beautiful, and proud creature, almost outweighed the physical pain he was in.

  Almost.

  Mikahl suddenly sat up.

  The memory of the Choska demon’s toothy mouth, and Grrr’s bloody body faded from his mind quickly. The rush of Ironspike’s magic had been charg
ing his blood for hours, and now his veins were full of pure liquid lightning.

  In his confused, yet alarmingly aware mind, a chorus of angelic voices called out to him in a symphony of vast and consuming sound. Each voice sang out a different melody of possibility. One voice sang of defenses: of a shield, of armor, of a field of force to hold something in place, or deflect an object. He wasn’t sure how he understood the glorifying music, but he did. Another voice sang of binding and constraining; another of finding, of searching and summoning. A melody, that was rather louder than the rest of the symphony, sang of fire blasts and concussive energy, of streaking missiles and lightning strikes. There was healing strength, and a whole percussive section of portal commands, but the sound that flared into a solo melody of its own, over the rest of the harmonious din, was the voice that sang of the “Bright Horse.”

  What it was, and why it was coming for him, he had no idea, but somehow Mikahl had called out to it, and now it was here.

  Queen Willa angrily watched the darkened battle in the distance, from the crenellated roof of the Royal Tower. She wanted to be there, amongst her soldiers, so badly that it was driving her mad.

  Andra, General Spyra, and the Mayor had forbidden her from joining in the battle at the outer wall. She had a duty to stand guard over the Wardstone, and to fight to protect it from those with evil intent. The mother lode of the magical bedrock was more or less under the palace, and she knew that it was what the demon was after.

  She doubted that Pael knew it, but one could actually place their hand on the core of the powerful stuff along the bottom of Whitten Loch. Had he known this, he could have just slipped into the castle grounds, gone for a swim, and saved himself a lot of trouble.

  There were other ways to access the Wardstone too. The mine had several passages, some big enough for wagons, but all of those tunnels opened inside or near the inner walls. If she were to go fight, and fall at the outer or secondary wall, it would only invite disaster. She was the last line of defense, and it irked her, because all she could do at the moment was watch Xwarda burn while her men were being overrun.

  A huge section of the city to the west and south was burning away. She stood there, feeling helpless, as portion after portion of the outer wall crumbled and was breached. The enemy was inside now. Her soldiers were trying desperately to get back to the secondary wall, but many of them couldn’t.

  Large groups of her Blacksword army were trapped in the city, fighting for their lives. It was all she could do to keep from rushing out to them on some wild magical spell to join them in their fight. Already, she was using her witchy spells to throw great blooms of light into the sky, so that her people could see the airborne enemies, and have the chance to defend themselves from them.

  Suddenly, from the ground directly below the tower, a bright light flared. She prayed to all the gods that Pael hadn’t blasted the castle proper already.

  She climbed up into a crenel, leaned out, and looked down to see what it was, but couldn’t gain the vantage point she needed. From behind her, the guardsman who was posted at the roof landing of the stair house indicated that a message was being called up. She climbed down, and ran to the small hut that kept the weather out of the stairwell, and strained to listen. She couldn’t make out the words, but knew that they had something to do with whatever it was that had illuminated the front of the castle so brightly.

  Impatiently, she hurried back over to the edge of the parapet. Whatever it was, it was shining so brightly now, that the forested park, and the fountain pond were almost fully illuminated and throwing long shadows out, and away from the castle. She saw groups of her reserve soldiers crouching from the radiance among the trees and pathways in the park. They were meant to be hidden, and now they squirmed to find the shadows the light cast through the trees.

  Instinctively, like a protective mother, Willa scanned the sky, and was relieved to see that neither the Choska, nor the dragon was overhead at the moment to see them.

  The guard at the top of the landing called out to the Queen, repeating the message he’d just gotten from the man posted below. His voice betrayed his hope and excitement.

  “The young western King has ridden through half the castle on the back of a winged horse made of lightning and flames!”

  She wouldn’t have believed it, had she not been looking down upon Mikahl and his impossible steed as the words were being spoken.

  It wasn’t exactly as she had dreamed, but there he was, racing around Whitten Loch on one of the cobbled paths. Mikahl spurred the horse into a leap, shimmering wings of white-hot fire unfurled, and the flaming Pegasus took flight. Raised high in Mikahl’s right hand, was the radiant sapphire blade of Errion Spightre. She couldn’t help but feel the hope his presence brought with it. As if to give that hope substance, as if the whole world rode with the young King of the Realm, dawn broke behind her, lighting the tips of the world beyond the castle’s long shadows, in hues of coppery gold.

  Mikahl cleared the innermost wall, and winged off to join the battle, then all of a sudden, all the hope that Queen Willa had just been feeling, was sucked from her chest, leaving behind an empty void of despair.

  The dawn’s light had revealed something else in the sky that glittered. The massive red dragon, bearing a tiny, black haired feminine figure, came swooping down out of the sky towards Mikahl, like a striking snake. Its intention was so obvious, and its bearing so true, that Willa had to look away.

  The young King seemed but a fly to a falcon, compared to the massive beast that was about to consume him with its fiery breath.

  Vaegon whirled, using the grip Targon had on his shirt, to help keep him balanced. He had almost fallen into the gap left by the missing section of ramp. Once he was steady, the wizard released him, and began casting a spell.

  Vaegon put himself between the handful of stinking attackers, and Targon’s prone stance and readied himself to protect them both, with his bare hands, if necessary. A flurry of friendly arrows came streaking up from below, but only served to slow the charge of the undead for a few heart beats.

  Vaegon resolved himself to fight to the death – not an easy resolution to make for an elf. He went to punch the unprotected, half melted face of one of the things raring to swing a blade at him, but once again, Targon yanked him out of the way.

  The undead soldiers had been struck still in their present postures, but their forward momentum was still carrying them ahead. Their bodies were as stiff as statues, and they couldn’t stop themselves. Two of them hit the ramp, and slid to a grinding halt. The others went tumbling over them, and fell into the dark, crowded area below.

  “Push the others over the ledge, elf!” Targon yelled. “The spell will only hold them still a moment more.”

  With that, he raced off towards the nearest scaling ladder, which was being topped by another wave of undead men.

  The wizard had been correct. Even as Vaegon rolled the last stinking corpse over the edge of the ramp, it was starting to move again. Before the thing toppled over, Vaegon put his foot on the man’s blade. It was a long sword, like Ironspike, and looked to be well kept. As the man’s grip let loose and he fell away, Vaegon took up the blade, and charged over to help Targon. He got there too late though, or maybe not getting their quick enough saved him from meeting the same dismal fate as Targon did.

  The Choska demon came swooping down out of nowhere at breakneck speed. Its clawed feet latched onto Targon and yanked him screaming up into the darkened sky.

  As if it were connected to the Highwander wizard by some unseen magical rope, the siege ladder nearest him was yanked away from the wall. The sudden sideways movement toppled the undead climbers back into the darkness below, like droplets of water shaken from a wet tree. Only two of them had gotten to the top of the now island-like section of wall though. Vaegon readied himself to take them on, as dawn’s light reached up over the mountains behind the castle. He and the two decaying men were alone atop the isolated section of struct
ure. All around them, some sixty feet below, raged a sea of bloody battle and searing flames.

  Vaegon hacked, slashed, blocked, and parried with the sword. Moving from one edge of the crumbling plateau to the other, he fought furiously, but the undead neither tired, nor relaxed their blades. Nearly at the edge, the two living corpses split up, thus putting Vaegon in an extremely vulnerable position.

  The first blow he took, caught him in the arm and split him from wrist to elbow. He dodged, and spun, slinging fat droplets of his elven blood. He even leapt like a tree cat, trying to get out from between them.

  The second blow he took, caught him on the back of the leg, and made him crumple to a knee. He didn’t give up though. He blocked, and spun, grinding his kneecap into the rough, gritty surface of the plank, and somehow managed to take an undead fighter’s leg off at the calf. When he turned to find the other though, after finally narrowing it down to one against one, he saw the undead soldier’s sun-tipped blade coming down in a gleaming speeding arc. All he could do was dive forward, and he did. He heard the “whoosh” of the steel as it passed a hair’s breadth over his scalp, then heard another sound – a harsh thumping grunt.

  He rolled to his back to see where the death blow was coming from, so that he might have a chance to avoid it, but what he saw was as baffling, as it was terrifying.

  The back end, and streaming tail of a horse made of silvery white flames, shot out of his vision. Apparently, it had swept the undead swordsman from the wall. He started to get up, but the huge red dragon came swooping over him, in pursuit of the flaming steed. Its jet of scorching hot flames went right over Vaegon. It was so hot, that he felt his skin blister, and could smell his hair burning. He was lucky, he decided. The blast could have easily been a little lower, or he could have made it to his feet. If either had happened, he would have been left a smoldering husk.