Twice Drowned Dragon (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 2)

by Annie Bellet

  I sent an arrow past the monks but it only scraped the thick hide of the strange beast. I nocked another, aiming this time for its eye.

  “No, no!” screamed one of the monks, turning toward us. “Hold the arrows! Don’t attack Peggy. Make noise.”

  Peggy? It almost sounded like the monks had named this thing.

  Rahiel, riding Bill, swerved around the bee cloud and slapped her wings together as she waved her glowing wand. A sound like thunder in the peak of a storm pealed out from her delicate wings, and the creature moaned, backing away down the hill. Makha banged her sword against the edge of her shield, though just running in plate armor had made a pretty good clamor. Azyrin and Drake started shouting and waving their arms.

  I halted and stood helpless, my bow hanging from my hand. Making noise was beyond me, thanks to my curse.

  The creature backed up further. The chain swung in a wide arc and then it pulled it back, curling it around its body. With a final cry, the odd beast spun and hopped away, disappearing into the cypress trees.

  “Apinir be blessed, we lost no hives,” said the oldest looking monk as he lowered his torch and turned toward us.

  “It’ll take them bees hours to quiet now,” muttered a monk with reddish, thinning hair and a sour cast to his features.

  “What in blazes was that thing?” Rahiel asked, flying down.

  “What’re you? An’ what’s that?” the sour-faced monk asked, holding his torch out in front of him like a shield.

  “Easy now, Nabbe, these fine folk helped drive old Peggy off.” The old man extended his hand to Drake, who stood nearest him. “I’m Abbot Konbri. Welcome to the monastery of Apinir.” His smile was genuine and though his face was lined like old parchment and his jowls soft, a keen intelligence gleamed in his cornflower-blue eyes.

  “I’m Drake Bannor,” Drake said, taking the Abbot’s hand. “That there’s Rahiel Glowbix, a pixie-goblin,” he added with a faint smirk directed at the one the old man had called Nabbe.

  “I’m Makha Stormbane,” Makha said, clanking forward and extending her gauntleted hand. “We’re Adventuring Guild, just passin’ through.”

  “Azyrin Stormbane,” the shaman said, moving forward as well.

  “A winter orc!” The Abbot chuckled. “I studied in Icerift for a while in my youth. And you, elf?”

  “That’s Killer. She’s mute, so forgive her lack of manners,” Drake said.

  The other monks came forward, looking at us curiously. The Abbot introduced them and then invited us in.

  The layout of the little monastery reminded me of a bee hive in some ways. There was a large hall, dominated by the cooking hearth, from which many little rooms branched off like cells in a honeycomb. Nabbe chose to stay outside and burn sweet-smelling wood that smoked a lot in an effort to calm the bees. The other monks showed us in and soon warmed to Rahiel’s enthusiasm for their honey.

  “The Sweetbee is like no other bee,” the Abbot agreed, smiling at the pixie-goblin as she flitted up to sit on the long black walnut table stretching much of the length of the common area. “They have no sting but produce the clearest honey you’ll find. Their hives are different, also. The middle of the hive cone is like a funnel that stores the honey they create. All we have to do is tap in and take what we need.”

  Once our packs had been stored within a couple of unused cells and we had thick bread coated in the thick golden honey, mugs of mulled wine, and heaping plates of roasted summer vegetables piled in front of us, the Abbot brought the strange creature up again.

  “It’s a Fachen. We named it Peggy, on account of it only having the one leg.” He chuckled at that and we obliged him by smiling around our food.

  Rahiel hadn’t, for once, been exaggerating. The honey was divine. It was thick and sweet but light, melting into the dark bread and then again on my tongue. I wanted to grab the honey pot sitting on the table and guzzle it. I caught Drake’s eye as I stared longingly at the pot and he smiled like he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “Why not just kill it?” Makha asked.

  “Kill Peggy?” The Abbot shook his head. “We try not to harm living things. Apinir teaches that the divine spark inhabits even the mosquitoes that bite our skin and the ants that steal our honey. A creature as unique as a Fachen probably has a great spark inside it. Besides, she’s lived down in the old orchard as long as I’ve been Abbot, and until recently never bothered a one of us.”

  “It’s that dragon,” said one of the other monks, a thin fellow with hunched shoulders who walked with a slight limp.

  “Dragon?” Azyrin set down his mug.

  “There is no dragon.” The Abbot glared down the table. “It’s a story. Back in the centuries after the Ancient Imperium crumbled.”

  I hid another smile. Ancient Imperium? Saliidruin is their proper name. A name now mostly forgotten. Even among the Elemental Elves, the world-breakers, as the name translated to, were almost more myth than history.

  “The Barrows got their name from that, you know,” said the thin monk. “Whole place was a burial site for the Imperials.”

  The Abbot shot him another glare. “They don’t care about old stories, Marto.”

  “We do care,” Azyrin assured him. “Old stories are meat to adventurers.” He smiled at the thin monk, who smiled wanly back, eyeing the half-orc’s sharp white teeth.

  “There’s a story about a dragon. How Coldragon got its name. Involves Wood Elves like your friend, actually.” The Abbot sighed and took a drink from his mug, settling in to tell the story. His blue eyes had a smile in them, as though his protests had been only for our sake. I imagined he didn’t get to tell the old stories much.

  Of course, he was dead wrong about one thing already. Whatever this story was, it involved no Wood Elves like me. I was no Wood Elf. You might be an old man, I thought, but you would’ve needed to live ten thousand lifetimes to know what sort of Elf I am. Everyone guessed Wood Elf on account of my brown hair and green eyes. I wondered what would happen if we ever encountered an actual Wood Elf. Fortunately, my far distant descendents were very reclusive and stayed within the Woodland Reach far to the north and east of here.

  “So they had to drown it twice?” Rahiel asked.

  I blinked. I’d been lost in thought about my people and the other elves and missed much of the story. The heavy food, warm fire, and long day were catching up to me.

  “Aye. They drowned the dragon a second time and this time the great black brute stayed dead. He’s supposed to be buried in a mound somewhere in these parts, but if so, it has long since sunk into the swamps.”

  “Or maybe not,” the thin monk insisted. “Nabbe saw it down near the orchard. Says it was big and black with rotted scales hanging off its bones.”

  The Abbot banged his empty mug on the table. “Enough. Nabbe craves more excitement than our quiet life gives, I’m afraid. Ever the curse of the young, eh?”

  “Well, something drove old Peggy out of its tower,” muttered the thin monk.

  “Tower?” Drake swiped his finger around his empty plate to get at the last drips of honey.

  “There’s an old keep out in the orchard. Whole land used to belong to some wizard-knight. Family fell on hard times, sold the fief to the Duke of Barrows, and eventually he deeded it to the monastery. The orchard has gone wild, but the bees like the flowers, so we let it stay as is. Plus Peggy lairs in the keep and until now was content to leave us alone so we left it alone, too.”

  I hid my smile behind my mug. The Abbot was trying to dismiss the whole thing, but he didn’t know my companions. I glanced around the table and recognized the excitement burning in their eyes. Makha had always itched to fight a dragon, joking that it was the only way to make a name for yourself as a fighter these days. The word “wizard-knight” had set Rahiel’s wings fluttering which made the flames in the great hearth flicker. Drake was probably calculating the odds of some lost treasure being hidden away in that keep or in the fabled dragon’s barrow, his fi
ngers spinning his empty plate around and around.

  Even Azyrin had a speculative look. Dragons came in all kinds, some good, some evil, most just little more than dangerous, dumb animals with only the cunning of a wolf pack. His god, Saar, Lord of Storms, demanded his disciples never turn from a dangerous fight and always lend a hand to protect those weaker than themselves. If a dragon were threatening these peaceful monks, Azyrin had to act.

  For me, well, dragons die to arrows the same as most things and helping these monks might count toward my one thousand good deeds. It couldn’t hurt to investigate this old keep and make sure the rumored dragon hadn’t been resurrected.

  “Wizard-knights, hmm…” Rahiel drizzled more honey onto her last crust of bread with a sharp-toothed smile. “It would only be proper of us to make sure nothing sinister lurks in that orchard, you know.”

  “Very wrong of us to leave kind men in danger,” Azyrin agreed.

  Makha clapped her husband on the shoulder and grinned. “Very wrong to leave a possible dragon rampaging.”

  “He told you about that dragon?” Nabbe came into the hall, brushing ashes from his smock. “They laughed at me,” he added sourly. “But I knows what I saw.”

  “Nabbe, no one laughed.” The Abbot sighed. He looked down at his empty mug with a bemused expression, as though wondering if there was something in the wine making us all insane.

  “Come, sit,” Drake said, patting the bench beside him. “Tell us. We promise not to laugh.”

  “There’s a big shallow pool by the keep. Old reflecting pool or some such. I saw it there. Big it was, and black as night. All bones and rotted flesh. Stared right at me with burning red eyes and I felt like all the joy and color was gone from the world. I couldn’t move or breathe or nothing. Then it looked away and I ran.” Nabbe shuddered and then glared around at us, his gaze half-challenging us to disbelieve him and half-desperate for us not to.

  “We went down there the next day,” said one of the other monks. “Saw nothing at all.”

  “I didn’t make it up,” Nabbe said.

  Though Makha, with her uncanny ability to discern truth, was nodding, I hardly needed the confirmation. Whatever this monk had seen, it had terrified him down to his bones. He had the unhappy, haunted look of a man who had faced something terrible and found himself wanting for courage.

  “Will you show us way in morning?” Azyrin asked gently.

  Nabbe pressed his lips into a tight line and then nodded.

  “Good. Is settled. We will make sure nothing bad there.”

  “Can we leave our packs here, Abbot?” Makha asked.

  “Of course,” the Abbot said. He gave himself a little shake and then shrugged. “We’d be happy enough for your assistance. Probably just a bear or some such that moved in and disturbed old Peggy.”

  My companions asked a few more questions about the keep and the orchard, as well as coaxed what detail they could about what the sour monk had seen. I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to be a bear or truly a dragon. Dragon, I thought. A dragon would be more of a challenge, but it was also more of a threat. Surely slaying a dragon would count toward my atonement. I stood up and stretched, looking forward to the morning.

  * * *

  After a quick breakfast of thick bread slathered with honey, I took my arrow bag and my quiver out onto the shallow steps in front of the monastery. I’d lost arrows in the fight with the spider and if we were to fight a dragon or even just a nasty wild animal today, I wanted to make sure I was full up. The dawn air was still cool but with a thickness to it that promised another warm summer day ahead. The monastery walls were nearly overgrown with wishvines, the tiny white blooms opening to greet the sunlight that crept over the trees like a bashful child coming home from a night of mischief.

  I slid arrows from my bag and checked them for damage to the fletching and straightness. The best ones I put into my quiver to take with me. I figured I’d leave the arrow bag with our packs. We had a short distance to travel with a likely fight at the end. Seemed little point in taking more than I’d need.

  Drake came out a few moments after I did and started limbering up. He pulled his kukri and began a flashing dance across the open area between the monastery and the bee hives. I glanced up the steps and saw two of the monks watching him. Showing off, then.

  Still, this seemed as good a moment as any to approach Drake about an idea that had been building in my mind for weeks now. I slid the arrow I was holding into my quiver and stood up. Crossing to where Drake had paused in his movements, I drew my dagger and imitated his stance. I had never had much use for a blade when I’d been able to speak. Having the ability to shape the world with magic via words of power made using a knife in self-defense or aggression a moot point. Easier to tear something limb from limb with a simple song. I had only learned to use a bow as a physical exercise, the same as I had learned to ride a horse or send and call a hunting raptor from my hand.

  Here in the mortal realms, however, I’d found myself using my dagger in moments when fights grew too close for bow work. I had no skill at it. I knew it. I could see the difference between the way that Drake’s short blade flicked and slashed and my own Good Tree get it off me now wild stabbing. I had many deeds left to perform before I regained my voice and with it my power. Many fights ahead of me. It was time I shoved aside the tattered rags of my pride and learned how to fight better with something other than Thorn.

  Drake stared at me and raised a dark brow. I waved the blade around a little, trying to tell him to start moving again without actually telling him. My curse was fooled, I think, since no headache overtook me.

  “Killer?” Drake kept staring at me like I’d grown a horn.

  Frustrated, I started trying to copy what I’d seen him doing. Step forward in a half-lunge, thrust with the dagger, slash sideways while moving other foot forward, slash. I stopped as I heard Drake’s laughter and turned to glare at him.

  “Oi. I get it. You want me to show you some moves, eh?” My glare managed to quiet his laugh down to a chuckle. “First, you are holding that wrong.”

  He walked over to me and reached for my hand. I flinched away and brought the blade up. I wasn’t sure if him touching me would count as communication, but I wouldn’t learn anything if I were knocked unconscious or made sick by my curse before we had even begun.

  “Whoa, okay. No touching. I got it. Here.” He sheathed his kukri and drew a smaller dagger from one of his tall boots. “Like so.”

  Drake led by example and showed me some basic ways to move and cut. When he approved of how I was moving, I switched hands and started again. He paused for a moment and then shook his head with a little smile.

  “Definitely more to you than meets the eye, eh, Killer,” he said.

  You have no idea. Besides, why be good with one hand when you might be injured and lose its use?

  Of course, I guessed that none of our little group was all that met the eye, as Drake put it. All I knew about him was that he hailed from the southern kingdoms and shot down any talk of ever traveling that way. Makha had been a mercenary with a reputable company until she met Azyrin, but whenever asked about that story, all they did was smile at each other and change the subject. Even Rahiel had her secrets. She was from one of the noble families in Glassnesse and all I knew is that we were heading that way because, with the acquisition of the black pearl she wore around her neck, she could finally pay off a debt she owed.

  “Hey, dripbats, if you two are done cavorting, we’re getting ready to leave in here,” Makha called out to us from the steps.

  “Coming,” Drake answered. He sheathed his dagger and nodded to me. “We’ll do this again. You’ve got good speed and range with those long arms of yours. Might have to put a rapier in your hand one of these days.”

  I shrugged as casually as I could and turned away. Don’t push it, human. Learning to use a dagger for emergency situations in a fight was one thing. I wasn’t ready to walk away from my beloved bow
just yet.

  “What was that?” Makha asked Drake as we walked by her.

  “She wanted to learn to handle her dagger better, I think.” Drake shrugged.

  “Don’t go putting one of your bull-stickers in her hand. We need her bow skills and she’s too good to become a ponce like you.”

  “What? You gonna give her one of those lumps of slow iron you call a sword?”

  “She’s too skinny to wield a proper blade,” Makha said as she eyed me.

  I snorted and turned, holding out Thorn. Go on, muscles, string my bow and pull it. I waved the bow, urging her to take with my eyes.

  “All right, elf.” Makha took the bow and tried to string it. She set the lower limb against her boot and pulled. Thorn didn’t even bend. Makha looked up at me as though trying to read my face and determine if some trick were being played here. She stepped through the string, attempting to do it that way. No luck as Thorn bent a little but not enough for her to slide the string into its notch.

  I took my bow back and set the limb against my foot, stringing it easily. Then I handed it back and made a pulling motion.

  “What tricks are you up to, elf?” Makha muttered as she pulled the string and couldn’t get past a half pull. Her fair skin flushed and she let out an angry breath as her efforts failed. “Got to be magic.”

  “It’s not magic,” Rahiel said as she settled her skirts from her perch on Bill’s back. “I checked if she had any magical items when we first met, remember? That bow is probably some sort of elfcraft, but there is no magic on it.”

  “It’s definitely unique wood,” Drake added. “I’ve seen it stop a sword strike the way you’d expect a staff would.”

  Makha handed Thorn back to me, and I pulled it to full draw before unstringing it and turning away with a smile. Watch who you call skinny, human.

  “Stronger than she looks, that’s for sure,” Makha muttered behind me.

  Nabbe had reluctantly agreed to show us the way to the orchard, his desire to have his story confirmed warring visibly with his fear of encountering the dragon again. It wasn’t a long walk, and most of it was down hill through fairly dry terrain. We crossed a couple shallow creeks and then the bog cypress and willows thinned out, turning to apple and cherry trees that were likely older than the monastery on the hill.