The Dragon Lord

by E. G. Foley

  The imp’s jaw dropped and tears welled up in his bulgy eyes, but for Victor, dread turned to fury.

  Finally breaking the paralysis of shock, he ran around to the other side of his bed, closer to the ghost. “Where is he, sire? I’ll kill him!”

  “Noooo. You…must…go.” It seemed to take a mighty effort for the Dark Master to project himself here from wherever he was.

  Victor feared he knew where Zolond was. But he swallowed down his frenzied emotions.

  The Dark Master wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble without a good reason. “Very well, sire. Speak. I am listening.”

  Victor shushed the horrified Magpen and listened, using all of his inborn ability to communicate with the dead to hear what the sorcerer-king had to say.

  The ghost gathered his strength, taking one slow, painful word at a time. “Get…out of the…house. Quickly. They are… coming.”

  “Who?” Worried, Victor stalked over to the window, but, by the light of the torches burning around the property, he saw nothing out of place.

  Beneath the waxing gibbous moon, the dragons stood guard on the front lawn, the Noxu kept watch from their posts all over the property, and the horned silhouette of the armored samurai waited, statue-still, with his katana in the darkness.

  “Hurry!” Grandfather urged.

  When Victor turned around again, Zolond had vanished, but then reappeared over by the bedroom door.

  “What’s he saying, sir?” Magpen ventured.

  Victor gave his servant a grim look. “Basically, that Lord Wyvern and his followers are on their way here to kill me.”

  Magpen didn’t panic, to Victor’s surprise. Instead, his ugly little face filled with resolve.

  Beneath his pointy nose, the imp’s dark blue lips flattened into a thin line. “Master Nagai told me this might happen. That we should be prepared. I’ve already packed our things, just in case, sire.”

  The imp trotted over to the massive wardrobe by the wall and pulled the doors open.

  Victor scowled. “I’m not afraid of Wyvern, and I’m certainly not going to just run away and abandon Master Nag—”

  “If the sorcerer-king says go, we go!” his servant cried with sudden defiance. “Come, Your Highness! With all due respect, if they can kill Master Zolond, they can easily kill you!”

  Victor found he had no argument for this. He suddenly realized that Magpen was right.

  With that, countless drills and a lifetime of training kicked in. Victor still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that this was really happening, nor did he actually intend to run away like a coward, but the pull of long-practiced habit took over.

  Baal’s beard, he’d been going through the motions of emergency evacuation procedures since he was a wee princeling. He could do it blindfolded and half-asleep.

  Indeed, he often had. People trying to destroy him came with the crown.

  “Must I go, Grandfather? It feels wrong,” Victor said to the waiting ghost as he pulled the heavy leather satchels out of the wardrobe when he saw the imp struggling under their weight. “Why can’t I just stay here and fight beside Nagai?”

  “Too…many,” Zolond intoned.

  “But we have your dragons—”

  “Too many!”

  Victor stopped, chilled. “If Nagai is going to be that badly outnumbered, then he’ll need my help all the—”

  “Go! Doomed.” Then the ghost looked mournfully toward the window. “Too late. They are here.”

  At that moment, one of the dragons roared, explosives boomed, and all Hades broke loose out on the front lawn.

  Magpen shrieked and flew behind him, but Victor froze as fear finally found him.

  Reality slammed him in the face. This was real. This was happening.

  His royal grandfather had been murdered—overthrown—and the son of Shemrazul was outside, come to kill him.

  “You…go…now.” Zolond glared balefully at Victor. “Preserve…my…bloodline!”

  At the reminder of his royal duty, Victor could only manage a nod. He was terrified for his noble sensei, but he clicked into motion.

  Swiftly and efficiently moving around the room, he grabbed a few essentials: his beloved box of crystals, his runes, his dragon’s-blood candle, along with a few others. Who knew if he would ever be back? He threw them all into his smaller satchel, along with his little black spell book and the most promising of the rare reference texts he’d taken from the library.

  Then he buckled on his weapons belt, making sure he had his alderwood wand securely sheathed, as well as his razor-sharp katana. Finally, he shrugged on his black leather coat, pulled a satchel up over each shoulder, and strode toward his chamber door.

  Magpen pattered, barefooted, ahead of him. “We’d better go out the back, master.”

  “No,” said Zolond. Urgency lent the ghost newfound strength—at least enough to speak in full sentences now. “The manor…is surrounded. Use…the tunnels.”

  “But Grandfather, I don’t know how to find the entrance.” The secret tunnels under Shadowedge Manor shifted and moved as an added security feature. “Plus, Nagai put a cloaking spell on it so I wouldn’t try sneaking out.”

  “Come.” The ghost floated through Victor’s closed bedroom door.

  “C’mon, Mags,” Victor said. “He wants us to leave through the royal escape tunnels. He’s going to show us the way.”

  Zolond was waiting in the hallway, drifting toward the stairs with his chains waving slowly behind him. His eyes were fierce, and his white hair blew in an otherworldly breeze.

  Gazing at him, Victor was heartsick that his only family member had been murdered, but there’d be time for grief later.

  “Follow,” the Dark Master ordered him, then turned and glided down the staircase, but his feet never touched the ground.

  As Victor neared the bottom of the stairs, the entrance hall itself was dark and still, but through the mullioned windows around the front door, he saw the orange glow of flames outside and the brilliant flashes of bluish-white light that usually meant a wand duel.

  He heard dragons roaring, Noxu screaming, Nagai yelling orders. Victor swallowed hard.

  The windowpanes rattled as another boom sounded. Then he heard glass break as a window upstairs somewhere shattered. One of the dragons unleashed a bellyful of fire; the other screeched with what sounded like pain. Clearly, it was chaos out there.

  Then a thunk hit the front door; it sounded like an arrow. Several more followed in quick succession.

  “Drow,” Grandfather said. “Hurry.”

  “Yes, sir,” Victor said, trying to sound brave, but he gulped. The Drow were among the stealthiest of Dark-kind. They were known to make great bounty hunters and assassins—and terrifying archers.

  Starting to feel a bit jumpy, Victor focused on his mission and followed the ghost. Zolond led him down the hallway toward the back of the house, and then through the manor’s sprawling kitchens, where they took a narrow servant staircase down to the wine cellar.

  It was dark, cool, and clammy down there. Magpen grabbed a lantern from the kitchen, then stepped through the door, pulled it shut behind him, and followed Victor down the creaky wooden steps.

  The cellar had stone floors and brick-lined, barrel-vaulted ceilings. The air was stale and smelled of oak barrels. Victor’s nose soon itched, for everything was coated in a thick layer of dust.

  At least the frightening sounds from outside were muffled here under the house. There was just the nervous patter of their footfalls as they followed the ghost.

  Glowing an ethereal white in the darkness ahead, Zolond swept confidently through the maze of honeycombed aisles, past rounded niches housing huge casks and countless wine racks draped in cobwebs.

  Zolond made a sharp right, zoomed down another stark passage, and stopped at the end of it. Victor hurried after him.

  “Come, boy. You must…do the spell. I cannot in this form.”

  “What do I do?”
<
br />   Zolond told him, and Victor carried it out. Raising his arms before the solid brick wall, he gave it the command Grandfather had said: “Aperi ianuam!”

  The magic flowed forth from him, and the brick pattern of the wall before him shimmered and dissolved. A half-smile tilted Victor’s lips as the cloaking spell revealed the heavy metal door behind it.

  Aperi ianuam. Victor committed the phrase to memory. I’ll have to remember that. If I ever see this place again.

  He grasped the cool metal handle and pulled the door open. Surprisingly, for its size, it swung without a sound on well-oiled hinges. Victor peered into the black tunnel again.

  “Go.”

  He turned to the ghost. “Where does it lead?”

  “Out. Away. Hurry. You will see. Survive,” Zolond rasped, gazing at him wistfully. “Live.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  The ghost nodded slowly. Magpen scampered past Victor into the tunnel, lifting his lantern high.

  Victor paused, at a loss for what to say to his dead grandfather. It wasn’t as though they had been close, but this was probably the last time he’d ever see him. “I’m sorry they did this to you, sire. Thank you for warning me. You saved my life. I…I’ll miss you.” Growing tongue-tied, he sketched a respectful bow and turned to go.

  “Grandson?”

  “Yes?” Two steps into the tunnel, Victor paused and turned back hopefully.

  Zolond’s reverse-echo words wafted into the darkness as he offered one last piece of advice: “Look for…Griffon.”

  Victor was taken aback. “Huh? Look for a gryphon?” What an odd command. “Whatever for?”

  Suddenly, Zolond lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “They are in the house. Run!”

  With that, the ghost slammed the metal door shut in Victor’s face.

  On their own now, Magpen and Victor looked at each other in shock.

  The imp wore a grimace of terror by the dim glow of the lantern. The Black Prince hoped he didn’t look as scared as Magpen, but at least he kept his wits about him. That light in the imp’s hand could get them killed.

  “Give me that.” He snatched the lantern from Magpen’s grasp and blew it out. They were instantly plunged into darkness.

  “But master—”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “They might notice the light. We don’t know how far this tunnel goes or where we might come out. We can’t risk them seeing us. Here.” Victor slid his wand out of its sheath and uttered a lesser illumination spell.

  At once, small baubles of pale orange light lifted from the tip of his wand and floated weightlessly a few feet ahead of him and his servant. Still too bright. He dimmed them with a low-toned command, adjusting the hue to a subtle blue glow, like will-o-wisps.

  “That should do it. C’mon, before they make it to the cellar.”

  As he and Magpen set off into the dark subterranean passage, the imp looked askance at him.

  “What was that you said about a gryphon back there, Highness?”

  Victor shrugged. “Grandfather told me to look for one.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea. Far as I know, all they’re good for is finding gold. Perhaps it was another warning of some kind? With my luck, probably just another enemy that wants to kill me.”

  Magpen furrowed his brow. “Well, did he say look for a gryphon or look out for one, sir? Like, find one, or make sure this gryphon doesn’t find you?”

  “Now that you mention it…I’m not sure.” Victor frowned, questioning himself now. “Ghosts are not the best communicators, Magpen!”

  The imp ducked at his exasperated whisper. “Well, don’t worry, sire, it’s all right. We’ll worry about that later. For now, let’s just get out of here. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for any gryphons either way.”

  Victor nodded, still annoyed at himself, and not just for mixing up the message in his panic, but for escaping like a coward through the tunnel in the first place. It seemed all wrong.

  He walked on in silence for only a few more paces, then stopped and turned to Magpen, overwhelmed. “I can’t do this! I can’t leave Master Nagai to die. He’s like family. And those dragons came here to protect me! I’m going back—”

  “Master, no!” His little servant seized his wrist in a viselike grip with his long blue fingers. “Magpen won’t let you!”

  “But he’s my sensei!” Victor’s anguished cry echoed down the tunnel, and tears rose briefly in his eyes. “He’s going to die out there, like the stinking Noxu!”

  “He pledged to Zolond he would protect you with his life, master, if the time ever came! And so did them stinky Noxus. So did I, for that matter!”

  Victor shuddered. “Oh, Magpen, I don’t want you to die for my sake, ever!”

  The imp’s bulgy eyes grew even wider with wonder. “Master…cares for Magpen?”

  Victor remembered abruptly that he was the scion of all evil and only cared about himself. “Of course not. Don’t be absurd.”

  The imp nodded, looking almost relieved. “Listen to your humble servant, Highness. Great Master Nagai trained you how to survive if calamity ever came. Do not disobey all he told you, now that it’s here. And you can’t ignore His Majesty’s orders, even if mighty Zolond is just a ghost. You are Prince Victor—the heir to the Black Crown! If you go out there to help Nagai and get killed, Wyvern wins, don’t you see? For now, we must go. But later, when you are all grown up, then you can come back and take revenge. Make the crown stealer pay for this night.”

  Victor gazed up angrily at the rough rock of the tunnel’s low ceiling. “You really think they’re going to give me the chance to do that, Magpen? To grow up?” He looked grimly at his servant again.

  “Well, don’t make it easy on them to kill you!” Magpen tugged insistently on Victor’s sleeve. “Come, my prince, we must go! Look on the bright side. At least you’re finally getting out of Shadowedge Manor.”

  “Not quite the way I envisioned it,” Victor mumbled.

  “But you’ll get to see the world, sir, finally. And girls.”

  That got his attention.

  Victor looked at him intently. “Well, I suppose there’s that.”

  And the small fact that, if he was free, he would no longer have to endure Professor Labyrinth’s ghastly hypnosis treatments to keep him in line.

  Indeed, if he vanished right now, maybe he wouldn’t have to become a Dark Druid at all.

  He could be anything, go anywhere he pleased…

  Then a muffled blast reached them from somewhere in the manor house above. Magpen glanced up fearfully at the tunnel’s roof. “They are close,” the imp whispered, “I can feel it.”

  So could Victor. And with that realization, his hopes of becoming some sort of free-wheeling grand tourist began fading fast.

  Fugitive is more like it. Hunted by traitorous Dark Druids and their Drow assassins, he was probably going to have to lie low for the next decade.

  But by then, if he lived that long, he’d be old enough to come back and destroy them all.

  “Come, master, we must go!”

  Resigned to his royal duty, Victor gave no further argument, but commanded the feebly glowing orbs to lead the way.

  Then he followed them into the darkness with his servant, headed he had no idea where.

  CHAPTER 40

  Beacon House

  That evening, Jake stared down at the black, swirling current of the river gliding by below the terrace at Beacon House. Alone and brooding, lost in his thoughts, he leaned against the stone-carved balustrade between two lanterns affixed to higher square pillars at regular intervals around the border of the terrace.

  The lamps shone out feebly against the early-arriving darkness of October. It was barely seven but it looked like midnight.

  Felt like it, too. With his unseeing gaze fixed on the lonely river view before him, Jake fingered the conch shell necklace he always wore around his neck. The one his mother had been wearing and quickly drap
ed around him as a baby on the fateful day when Uncle Waldrick’s betrayal had separated them.

  Jake could not believe that today, some twelve years later, he had stood in the same dark cavern where the Dark Druids had been keeping his parents all this time. Aye, and most of all, he could not believe that he had left without them.

  He shook his head as his painful thoughts moved on, gliding restlessly over the past, Time flowing by like the water beneath him.

  The little conch that he rolled back and forth between his fingers gave him the ability to call on the water nymphs if ever he needed their help. (His mother had done them a favor back in her Lightrider days.) Derek had had Jake blow into it on the night the mysterious warrior had first brought him and Dani here, to Beacon House. The same night Derek had shown the two of them that magic was indeed real, and they were surrounded by a whole world that most humans had no idea existed.

  The Guardian had proven his claims when Jake’s unwitting puff through the seashell summoned Captain Lydia Brackwater of the Thames water nymphs.

  The green-haired guardian of the river had grabbed Jake off this very terrace and plunged him—literally—into a world of wonder he would not have believed possible. They’d traveled at top speed underwater as the fierce freshwater mermaid dragged him off to show him the home he’d come from: Griffon Castle.

  That night, Jake had learned who he was, and his whole life had changed.

  It had changed again today, to be sure, but once again, he had no idea where it all would end.

  He only knew that his soul ached worse than his body did tonight, and that was saying something, after being beaten up by a dragon.

  Why, he had barely recovered from his aerial battle against the dirigible before being carried off by Nightstalkers and then nearly eaten by a dragon.

  But none of that had prepared him for the agony of today.

  He could not believe Aunt Ramona was dead. A layer of shock still overlaid his churning loss and grief and pain, like a sheet of ice that formed on top of a lake in the winter.

  It made no sense.

  He could not stop thinking about her, her prim, pursed lips, the way she’d arch her eyebrow, her efforts not to smile when he and his friends amused her. He thought of her embroidery needle that sewed by itself because the Elder witch did not have time for such idle hobbies. He thought of her beehives at Bradford Park and that stupid mechanical monkey Jake had given her for her birthday. He wished now he would’ve given her a better gift…