Flight to Dragon Isle

by Lucinda Hare

  ‘Hugo! Curse you! What have you done?’

  Drums beat like a pulse in the Earl’s head.

  The Maelstrom is rising!

  ‘Stormcracker!’ the Earl called in hopeless rage as hobgoblins swarmed towards him over the heaped bodies of their comrades. ‘We are betrayed! Retreat to Open Sky.’

  ‘Combat retreat! Combat retreat,’ the trumpet rang out, as red flared in the sky and blood flowed into the sand. ‘Combat retreat!’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Nightmare

  It was freezing in the Sorcerers Glen. Ice covered the water in the washbasin in Quenelda’s bedchamber. The Earl’s daughter turned restlessly in her bed, throwing off the heavy quilt. She was dreaming of dragons, dreaming that she was a dragon … dreaming that she was Stormcracker …

  It was the blackest, darkest night she had ever known. The air was treacle-thick and choked with Battle Magic. Heavy clouds forked with green lightning were gathering in the night sky, obscuring the stars. A concussion of explosions ripped through the air as the Dragon Lords tried to protect their retreating men. Dragons died, their song silenced in her head.

  Her twin hearts were thumping, racing. She was wounded, weakened, her side burning. Dark dragons were clustered along the shoreline so that the Earl’s exhausted troops and heavy dragons could not reach the safety of the transports. With a burst of raw hatred she flamed, feeling the power of her breath vaporize the ice-bound sea itself, hearing the hobgoblins’ high, thin squeals abruptly cut off. Thick dark smoke stung her eyes: Dark Magic from the Abyss – an ancient foe was rising. A Sabretooth was pounding over the ice, trying to reach a departing transport. It died under the combined assault of three dark dragons; then the laden transport was gone too, swallowed by the water.

  Rage filled Quenelda as a roostmate staggered and fell beneath the hobgoblin hordes: the Imperial was hidden beneath a mound of heaving hobgoblins, pale as maggots devouring a carcass, the dragon’s frantic cries filling her head, then abruptly falling silent.

  Time slowed. The wind shrieked. Lazy, fat flakes of snow fell thickly. A dragon flamed. She never saw the Razorback until it smashed into her from behind, killing dozens. Hurtled sideways, the impact punched the air out of Quenelda’s lungs. She felt bones crack. Spikes lanced into her side. Hot blue blood spurted into the freezing night. Instinctively she rolled, flaming as she spun, hearing the cries of the injured who weren’t strapped in falling away. More deaths … Her serrated tail and talons searched for the soft underbelly, spilling the dragon’s steaming entrails into the night.

  She felt the subtle touch of rein and hand, heard her bonded Dragon Lord’s command clear across the battlefield; fearful words that touched Quenelda’s dreaming mind and shook her to her core. ‘Treason! Treason! Combat retreat!’ her father cried. ‘Combat retreat!’

  Snow weighed down her injured wings – along with hundreds of the wounded, who clung on desperately, trying to reach the safety of her spinal plates. But many fell away into darkness every time her wings beat downwards. The air was brittle, freezing her wings, crackling in her lungs.

  ‘Treachery, treachery,’ the Earl cried as he slipped into darkness. ‘Fly! Fly for your lives!’

  Then the blizzard obliterated everything.

  Quenelda woke with a start, a scream on her lips that brought Root stumbling through from the outer chamber, cursing as he stubbed his toe on the great wooden bedstead.

  ‘Treachery! Fly! Fly for your lives!’

  ‘Quenelda?’ Root rekindled the fire and lit a taper, his hand shaking so much he could barely hold the candle. He looked down at his friend, smothering a curse as the hot wax poured over his knuckles. Quenelda was thrashing from side to side.

  ‘Quenelda, wake up, wake up, you’re dreaming.’

  She sat up suddenly. Bending forward, she struggled to draw breath. She coughed and coughed and coughed. Freezing smoke filled the air about her. Root drew back. Such a strange smell … He frowned, upturned nose wrinkling as he sniffed: brimstone and the bitter stench of scorched scales. Quenelda pushed back her sweat-soaked hair and opened her eyes. Root dropped the candle in fright. Her eyes blazed so bright that they lit the bedchamber, and at their heart a roiling black that reflected movement and colour from some other place. Dark scales followed the ridge of her right brow and cheek.

  Plucking up the guttering candle, Root held it high. ‘Quenelda, what’s happening? What’s happening to you?’

  ‘P-Papa …’ Quenelda reached out desperately, her voice strangely deep and rasping. Her hand met empty air. ‘Papa …’ she swallowed, trying to find her voice. The dream was so vivid she could smell the brimstone, feel its hot burning sulphur catching in her throat as her dragon soul retreated. Heart pumping, she shivered in the frosty air and pulled the bed furs closer.

  ‘Quenelda?’ Root put down the candle, trying not to show his own anxiety. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘They’ve been betrayed.’ Quenelda’s teeth were chattering. ‘They’re dead. They’re all dead …’

  ‘Hush.’ Root held her frozen hand between his. ‘It’s just a nightmare. Sleep …’

  Quenelda’s eyes closed and her head fell back on the pillows, hair spilling over her face.

  ‘There, sleep now,’ the gnome whispered, pulling up the quilt and tucking it about her. ‘Don’t worry. Another moon and your father will be home.’

  Stepping over to the window and throwing back the curtains, he gazed out into the darkness.

  Won’t he?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Maelstrom is Rising

  The Lord Hugo Mandrake was exhausted. Each time he drew upon the Maelstrom it was becoming harder to hide the effects of Dark Magic. His eyes were turning blacker; a fine latticework of green veins now stretched over his brittle skin. He had no appetite – at least for ordinary food and drink. His mastery of elemental power was growing; the dark of the Maelstrom was rising at his command. Over-confidence had conjured a blizzard far worse than that at the Cauldron; one that drove even mighty Imperials into the ground and overturned and sank their transports and galleons. But once unleashed, it surged out of control, and now the north beyond the Old Wall – that ancient relic of the First Age, a wall that crossed the highlands – was buried beneath a unnaturally brutal winter.

  He had, perhaps, been too ambitious too soon, because the surge of power that had flowed through his veins during the Battle of the Westering Isles had left him feeling sick and scorched inside, unable to stand. Barely able to open a portal in the raging blizzard he had created, he fled the ice shelf before he was discovered, racing through the nexus for the sanctuary of his nearest castle on the Northern Isles, and from there to a keep close to the Howling Glen. The effort had exhausted him. Something was wrong; the toxic elixir that gave him the strength to survive was no longer enough.

  The ancient Dragonsdome Chronicles had recorded that chaotic Maelstrom Magic, once unleashed, was ultimately uncontrollable. Housed in the vanished Sky Citadel, the Chronicles had been lost these past two thousand years. Only the Dragon Whisperers, so legend said, had the power to defeat warlocks, and they too had long since passed from the mortal realm, vanished into history.

  The candle burned down. The Inner Council were meeting tonight. The city was growing restless, and the watch were fully deployed keeping order. There had already been several incidents of looting as rumours of disaster swept the Black Isle.

  The cauldron changed colour. The freezing liquid sizzled as it touched the soft metal. Hand shaking so badly he could barely hold the pewter tankard, the Grand Master dipped it into the brew. Greedily he drank down the elixir and let the goblet fall with a clang. He sank to his knees within the cloak of concealment he had cast, and wrapped his arms about himself, rocking to and fro, his heart pounding. His skin shifted and moved as if something alive lay beneath it. Hugo Mandrake stifled a groan, doubling up as the elixir consumed him, changing him, mending his broken body.

&n
bsp; CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Thaw

  A pale dawn tickled the horizon. The endless blizzard had finally exhausted itself, and silence lay in its place. A thaw had set in, and the ice about the island was breaking up. On the ancestral lands of the Narwhal clan, a dwarf fortress almost buried by snow drifts was stirring into life. Sentries in sealskin and furs stamped their feet to warm them and began to wonder if today they would finally learn the fate of the SDS. It was half a moon since the outriders from the SDS fortress at the Howling Glen had come to the island seeking news of the battle that had taken place far to the west.

  As the light grew in the east, a sentry squinted and rubbed his eyes. The shoreline was littered with huge shapes, the cry of sea crows loud and raucous in the early dawn. Whales perhaps, the dwarf prayed. The clan were near starvation. If a pod of whales had beached, there would be food enough for this cursed long winter and more. Blubber to render into oil for lamps, bones for tools and weapons. Lifting his axe, he roused his fellows. They left their long houses and made their way through the ramparts and down the cliff path to the shore. Complaining loudly, the sea crows grudgingly gave way to the group.

  More colour leached into the sky, giving the grey shapes texture and colour. The dwarf fell to his knees, his axe falling unheeded onto the sand. A cry of horror broke from his lips. The great shapes lying frozen on the sand were not whales.

  They were dragons: battledragons.

  ‘Launch the swiftest of our longboats, choose our best sailors. We must send word to Dragon Isle.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The SDS Have Fallen

  As every day passed without news, the rumours and counter-rumours grew wilder. Winter’s grip grew harsher. Fear and panic spread around the city. Afraid, and on the verge of panicking themselves, the councillors of the Sorcerers Guild were fractious. As the door swung open to admit the now familiar tall figure of the Strike Commander, Jakart DeBessert, the sound died on a wave of hope that this time he would report good news.

  ‘Well?’ the Grand Master demanded.

  DeBessert was shocked by the changes he saw in the Guild’s most powerful sorcerer. The man’s eyes were feverish with exhaustion as he rose shakily to his feet. The weight had fallen off him, and his face had a pallid, almost green tinge to it. Dark hair was now turned to silver.

  By the Gods, he looks dreadful! He can barely stand. His grief is eating him like a cancer … He loves the Earl like a brother …

  ‘Well?’ The hoarse voice of the Lord Hugo Mandrake broke into his thoughts. ‘What has happened? Where are they? Nearly a moon has passed since the SDS departed for the Westering Isles.’

  ‘My lords, we have had word from an Elder of the Narwhal clan that the thaw in the north has brought bodies of dragons and men to their shores. Bodies beyond counting, burned beyond recognition. A few dragons and their riders made it ashore.’

  ‘There are survivors?’ The hoarse words were torn from the Grand Master.

  ‘No, my lord – their minds were turned to madness. Clan mages cared for them as best they could, but had not seen the like of their injuries, and before long they all died, as did all those who tended them.’

  They bear the taint of the Maelstrom …

  The Guildsmen were on their feet, a dozen questions on their tongues.

  ‘But they had escaped the battle?’

  ‘Then there could be others …’

  ‘Is there no other news?’

  ‘I regret there is more, Masters,’ The Strike Commander’s words cut through the babble. ‘Come the spring, if the ice continues to spread south, the hobgoblins will cross it in their droves.’

  The Grand Master cursed inwardly. So far that news had died with the SDS Commander and his men. This Strike Commander was one to watch.

  There was a stunned silence, then the frightened Guildsmen surged forward about DeBessert. The Lord Hugo thumped his staff on the floor for silence and turned dark eyes on the Commander.

  ‘Come spring, can Dragon Isle hold the line? Do you have enough dragons? Enough men?’

  ‘My Lord Grand Master—’ the SDS Commander began.

  The building shook to its foundations. All heads turned to where the Guild pads were anchored. Faint shouts could be heard. Hope kindled in every mind but one. The chamber held its collective breath, hoping beyond hope to see a familiar figure stride through the door. Hearts raced – none more so than the Grand Master’s. Grasping his staff so hard it hurt, he gathered dark sorcery about him, ready to open a portal. The harsh clatter of footsteps on stone echoed down the stairwell. All eyes followed their progress as they came closer and closer, everyone eager for good news.

  Urgent hammering sounded. The heavy doors crashed open. A young Dragon Lord burst in, chest heaving, breath as ragged and torn as his armour. He wore the badge of a Group Captain in the Nightstalkers.

  ‘My l-lords’ – his horror-struck eyes sought DeBessert’s and held them with a desperate intensity – ‘I bear word of the battle. My lords, the SDS have fallen. They are all dead, all devoured. The Ice Fortress is also destroyed, and the scent of strange sorcery lies heavy about it. The hobgoblins were ravenous; starving. In the aftermath of the battle, they … they feasted, my lord. They and their … their dragons.’

  A gasp echoed about the chamber. Hands flew to mouths and hearts. Hobgoblin dragons? Dragons? That could not be. The hobgoblins and dragons were ancient enemies. The guildsmen’s cries drowned out the young officer’s next words.

  ‘Sir’ – he spoke urgently, softly to DeBessert – ‘sir, only the magic of our Imperials and Arch Mages could wound or kill them. Sir, what does that mean?’

  ‘Keep that news to yourself,’ DeBessert commanded quietly, ‘until we return to Dragon Isle. It means that these creatures are spawn of the Maelstrom.’

  Shocked to silence, the young man nodded.

  ‘Dragons born of the Maelstrom?’ Suddenly the Grand Master was at the young man’s shoulder. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. They are black as the Abyss, covered in poisonous spikes, and their foul breath kills all it touches. But that is not all …’ The young man swayed. ‘There was a huge hobgoblin whose dragon flew the banner of their warlord. I recognized him from the Battle of the Howling Glen. It was Galtekerion. He is alive! And there is no sign of the Earl Rufus – he must have fallen in battle with his men!’

  With a groan, he crashed forward. Only then did they see the barbed quarrels that protruded from his back. As members of the Apothecaries Guild came to help him, the Grand Master staggered and sat heavily on his chair.

  ‘I must attend the Court,’ His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the utter silence. ‘The Queen must be informed of this latest news. It will cause her great grief, as it does me.’ He beckoned a servant forward. ‘Have my dragon saddled immediately. I must fly.’

  ‘I will accompany you, my Lord.’ DeBessert closed his eyes.

  They are all dead? The SDS is utterly destroyed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Holding the Line

  The Queen had had a harrowing night. Having learned of the Earl Rufus’s fate from the Grand Master, she had been faced with the task of breaking the heartrending news to his daughter. A daughter who loved her father, who dreamed of flying at his side; a daughter who had grown so much in the last year, showing the first hints of who she would become as a woman. By the time the Queen’s Constable returned with Quenelda and her esquire from Dragonsdome, the girl must have known. She could not have failed to hear the tolling bells, or see the standards flying at half-mast over the palace. Queen Caitlin had met Quenelda and gently told her of their loss; had explained that many lost those whom they loved in times of war. That her beloved father was dead – to the eternal grief of them all.

  Caitlin was prepared for heartbreak. But instead of tears, there had been defiance. A stubborn refusal to believe that her father was dead – and the shocking accusation of betrayal by the Grand Master.

  ‘H
e’s not dead,’ Quenelda insisted tearfully. ‘He survived. Stormcracker bore him away.’

  Sir Gharad looked at her in pity. ‘How do you know, child?’

  When questioned, Quenelda revealed to the Queen and her Constable a dream she’d had on what she believed to be the night of the battle. A dream of dragon fighting dragon. Dark dragons like Midnight Madness, only worse, far worse. A dream of Stormcracker bearing her injured father away from the battlefield, the cry of treason on his lips. But where he was now, or why he had not returned to the Howling Glen or Dragon Isle, she could not say.

  ‘Maybe he’s too badly wounded,’ she insisted tearfully. ‘Or Storm is too injured to fly, or they are hiding from the Grand Master’s men.’

  Stunned, shocked, suddenly hopeful, the Queen’s heart leaped within her, despite her Constable’s gentle restraint.

  ‘Majesty,’ Sir Gharad cautioned, knowing what she was thinking. ‘Even if the Earl survived the battle he may yet have died from his wounds.’

  The young Queen knew he was right. When the weather allowed flying, the SDS Search and Rescue patrols had found nothing; but there were thousands of islands and caves off the rugged west coast where survivors could be concealed. She was foolish, she knew it, but she wanted to believe, like Quenelda, that the Earl was still alive, hidden somewhere, nursing his wounds, waiting until spring came to return home. Nothing could fly in the howling blizzards that now swept the north.

  But if they were to believe Quenelda’s dream that the Earl had survived the battle, then they must also believe the horrifying, unthinkable news that the SDS had been betrayed by a man at the heart of the kingdom – the Earl’s childhood friend and Grand Master of the Guild. But who could they tell and what could they do? Who had the power to defy a warlock? To betray their suspicions would tear Court and Guild apart, and there was not a shred of proof for any of it save Quenelda’s word.