Zaarusha roared and shot flame at a shadow dragon. Engulfed in fire, it writhed and fell to the ground, killing a fleeing family.
“Gods, no! We have to get our people out of here,” Ezaara melded with the dragons. “Retreat. Everyone, assemble outside.”
Dominique charged a shadow dragon, firing an arrow straight through its eye. A fake mage shot a plume of green flame at him as the beast plunged to the cavern floor, squashing people. Every time someone felled a dark dragon, their people died beneath the flailing body.
“Stop! We need to get everyone out of here,” Zaarusha’s message swept through Ezaara’s mind like a thunderstorm.
While their people fled, Ezaara and Zaarusha hung back, flaming dark beasts, dodging tharuk arrows and blasting fire and arrows at the tharuks below.
“Get Zaarusha out of here,” Handel melded with Ezaara. “Now!”
“Zaarusha,” Ezaara sobbed. “We have to go. Our people need their queen. We can’t risk losing you.”
Zaarusha roared as a tide of tharuks and shadow dragons surged through the main cavern, burning, slashing and murdering their people.
§
“Flee, Marlies. Tharuks and dark dragons are overrunning Dragons’ Hold.” Liesar’s command ripped through Marlies’ mind.
Marlies had heard bellows, felt the infirmary floor ripple beneath her feet as roars reverberated through the mountainside. The wall beside her shuddered.
“I’ll be there soon. Don’t take too long.” Her dragon knew she’d grab healing supplies before she left. “Where are we fleeing to?”
A roar thundered out on the infirmary ledge. Something thunked against the doors.
Marlies grabbed Liesar’s empty saddlebags and swept her remedies off the tabletop. They clattered into the saddlebag. She snatched up her large travel rucksack and stuffed it with the three loaves of bread on her table, meant for patients’ breakfasts, a half-full sack of apples and some full waterskins. They’d need everything they could carry.
She shoved blankets and candles into the saddlebags. Oh gods, how she wished she had piaua. Bandages were next. Marlies ran to the alcove and shoved more remedies into a sack and put them in the saddlebags too.
Now she could hardly lift the saddlebags. She dragged them along the floor and tucked them by the doors to the infirmary ledge.
Throwing on her winter cloak, she mind-melded with Liesar. “Where are we going? How many dragons are coming to transport my patients?”
Liesar’s snarl ripped through Marlies’ head. She saw her dragon’s talons ripping the neck of a tharuk, then swiping another’s belly, its entrails spilling to the stone.
Tharuks were inside Dragons’ Hold? Dragon’s talons! Things were worse than she’d thought.
A moment later, Liesar melded again, “I’m sorry, Marlies. There are no spare dragons to bring your patients. Make sure you have adequate weapons and leave the rest. This is war.”
She glanced at Caldeff, and another elderly rider with a heavy chest cold, the woman who’d broken her shin, and Kion, the littling boy who’d come to get his arm stitched. She roused them all.
They sat up, bleary-eyed.
“Quick! Into my alcove. Tharuks have overrun the hold. Pull the curtain and stay quiet. They may not find you there. You.” She gestured to Kion. “Pull on your cloak, boots and warm clothes and come with me.” If she had to choose, she’d save the young.
Her patients raced into the alcove and yanked the curtain shut. One of them started coughing. Marlies’ chest clenched. They had no chance. Leaving them broke her heart, but there was nothing she could do. With Leah most likely dead with the red guards, she was the only healer Dragons’ Hold had left, aside from Ezaara. If they were to have a chance in this war, she had to get out of here.
There was a thud against the door to their quarters by the infirmary.
Someone was outside.
“Quick!” she hissed at Kion. “Grab that bed.”
Together, they pushed it in front of the door to form a barricade. It wasn’t much, but it’d win them a few moments.
They dashed toward the infirmary ledge. Marlies thrust the doors open. Kion helped her drag the saddlebags outside.
The bed grated on the stone behind them.
The boy shut the outer doors—it was a flaming shame there was no lock on them.
Marlies spun as Liesar landed on the ledge, spraying slush. She hoisted the saddlebags and managed to get them over Liesar’s back.
“Quick,” Liesar melded.
“No kidding,” Marlies snapped.
Roars broke out in the infirmary. Please, oh gods, please… It was too much to hope that the tharuks wouldn’t find her patients.
Screams rang out. Kion clutched her sleeve, wide-eyed.
Liesar raised herself on her legs.
“Quick,” she hissed to Kion. “Get under Liesar’s belly and pull this strap through.”
The boy ducked under and passed her the strap. Marlies fastened it, then threw him up into the saddle and leaped up behind him.
Tharuks thrust the doors open. Behind them, one of the beasts ripped back the curtain, exposing her quaking patients. The tharuk slashed its claws across Caldeff’s body. The old dragon rider sank to the stone in a pool of blood.
She covered Kion’s eyes, glancing back to carnage and bloodshed, as Liesar leaped off the ledge—into a swarm of dark dragons.
§
The main cavern was chaotic. Hans leaped onto Handel, nocked an arrow, leaned over his side and shot a tharuk, then another. A dark dragon swooped down, talons out. Hans fired an arrow through its throat. It bucked and writhed, its mage rider flinging wizard flame. Handel swerved, nearly veering into a blue guard, then backwinged and twisted.
“We have to get higher,” Hans melded. The screams of the dark beasts ripped through their minds. Gods, he could hardly think straight.
Handel ascended, belching flame through a swathe of dark dragons. He snapped at a black ragged wing, shredding it. The shadow beast plummeted, shrieking, onto a troop of tharuks, splattering black blood on the stone.
Its screams skittered through Hans’ skull. He loosed arrow after arrow at tharuks and dark dragons. Streaks of color shot through the cloud of dark beasts, cries of anguish from men and women, as they were struck, burned or sliced with those awful rays from shadow dragons’ eyes.
Blue guards had tattered wings, rents in their bellies. Carcasses from good dragons littered the floor. Hundreds of tharuks swept in, shooting numlocked arrows.
Handel swerved to avoid the numlock. “We don’t want you trying any of that again.”
“No, thanks,” Hans said. “Once was enough.” Recently, he’d nearly died from Zens’ paralyzing poison in Death Valley.
“Look out!” Hans ducked, lying against Handel’s spinal ridge as a mage shot a volley of green flame over his head, scorching the ceiling. He reached for an arrow and shot it straight into the mage’s neck.
The mage slipped from the saddle, blood streaming down his neck. His body toppled into the chaos below.
“Handel, I’m out of arrows.” Handel flamed his way through the cavern, staying near the roof, sending a billowing trail of flame over the dark dragons thrashing below.
They shot out of the main cavern among shadow beasts fighting blue guards. Bursts of orange and green flame lit up pockets of the sky, flaring like shooting stars. A dragon with burning wings plummeted to the ground.
“To the infirmary, Handel. We must find Marlies. Quick.”
Handel flew up the snowy mountainside and landed on the infirmary ledge. Hans slid to the ground and ran through the open infirmary doors.
Blood splattered the infirmary beds, floors and walls. A man lay dead on the floor, his throat slashed by vicious claws. A woman had been flung sideways across a bed, her head staved in. A mutilated body was in the alcove. Nausea churned in his belly as he checked each patient. Dead—tharuks had killed them all.
Only the young lad was mi
ssing. With luck, he’d escaped.
He scanned the bodies, relieved when he didn’t find Marlies. And guilty for feeling relief when so many had died.
Hans raced next door into their sleeping cavern and snatched up quivers of arrows, more daggers and an extra sword and bow. He grabbed the thick winter quilt off the bed and ran back out to the ledge, stuffing everything in Handel’s saddlebags.
Not a moment too soon. Behind him, the infirmary doors smashed open. Tharuks snarled.
Hans leaped into the saddle. The battle was still raging in the sky.
“We’ve been ordered to flee.” Handel tensed his haunches and sprang, beating his bronze wings.
“Where to? Spanglewood? Montanara?”
“Look behind you,” Handel howled.
Hans glanced back.
Swarms of seething black dragons blotted out the sky. They’d be upon them in moments.
§
Singlar wheeled in midair, so Lars could scan the main cavern littered with their dead. The overpowering reek of burned flesh and the coppery tang of blood stuck in his throat. Down there, caught between his smoldering dead dragon and a horde of tharuks, was a rider battling for his life. His sword gleamed black with tharuk blood.
“Save him,” Lars commanded.
Singlar dived down to the fighting beasts, his purple scales flashing in the light from dark dragon flames. He snatched the rider in his talons and blasted the tharuks with fire.
Their dying snarls ripped through Lars’ mind. He smiled grimly. They’d got what they deserved.
“Zaarusha is commanding us to flee,” Singlar said. “Never in my hundreds of years, did I ever think we’d abandon Dragons’ Hold.” His purple wings were bathed in the shadow dragons’ blood as he sped across the cavern.
Dark dragons were landing on the floor of the cavern, feasting on the dead—dragons, dark dragons, tharuks and riders alike. Lars’ stomach roiled.
Most of the exit passages were swarming with dark dragons, but high up near the ceiling was a seldom-used tunnel. Singlar blasted flame at a shadow dragon’s head and swept his mighty wings upward. He grunted as the yellow rays from a dark dragon’s eyes gashed his foreleg. Lars swept into the tunnel upon Singlar’s back, Singlar still carrying the brave rider in his talons.
§
With a bone-shuddering roar, Zaarusha burst out of the main cavern into the night, dark dragons on her tail. Hordes of shadow dragons swarmed over the top of Dragon’s Teeth, snarling. Their flames lit up the sky. Fake mages shot bolts of mage fire from their backs. Overhead, a canopy of ragged black wings blotted out the stars. Roars and shrieks tore through the dark.
Despite the screams ripping through her skull, Ezaara melded with Zaarusha, “The opaline headbands—we can’t fight without them. Quick, back to my cavern.”
Zaarusha whirled, blasting flame at the shadow dragon tailing her. Ezaara ducked as yellow beams from its eyes lanced through the dark and sliced off the tip of her braid.
“Lower, Zaarusha.”
Zaarusha swooped. They raced to the mountainside, climbing until they reached Zaarusha’s den and the ledge outside Ezaara’s cavern.
Slipping out of the saddle, Ezaara dashed inside, slamming the door to the ledge behind her. Across her cavern, snarls and stomping feet came from the tunnel outside her main door. Tharuks were overrunning the hold. She ran over and slid a bar across her door. Then, she shoved a chest of drawers against the door too. Ezaara strapped extra weapons to her waist, slung quivers over her shoulder and had just grabbed the sack of opaline headbands when something large thudded to the ledge outside.
Roars shook her cavern, the outside doors rattling on their hinges. There was a flurry of thumps and snarling.
“Zaarusha?” Ezaara caught rage, snatches of talons and the flash of beige scales.
“It’s that traitor, Unocco,” Zaarusha roared.
Unocco—fighting Zaarusha. Gods, no! Ezaara snatched up the sack of opaline headbands and raced outside, flinging the door open.
A dark figure pounced on her, slamming her back against the rocky face. Her sack and quivers thumped to the snow.
“Now I can finish off what I started in Naobia.” Simeon pressed his body against hers, his chest mashing her breasts, his hands grasping at her breeches.
She kneed him in the groin. And jabbed her elbow up under his chin.
He reeled back, staggering in the snow, and snatched a dagger from his belt.
Dark dragons fought their dragons in the sky behind them. Zaarusha and Unocco fought too, snarling and thrashing at one another with their talons. “Unocco’s been turned with swayweed. I don’t want to flame one of my own kin.” She roared. “Kill Simeon.”
Simeon snarled, his face twisting in an enraged grimace, and rushed at Ezaara, dagger flashing.
Ezaara drew her sword and lunged. Her blade met Simeon’s belly as he flew at her, piercing his flesh. His momentum drove the blade deep inside him.
Simeon’s eyes flew wide and he clutched his gut. He staggered to the edge of the ledge, his bloody fingers around the blade.
Ezaara stood, stunned. Simeon’s blood ran off her blade, dripping into the slush. He stared at her, pulled her sword from his belly and threw it into the snow.
She picked it up. By the dragon gods, should she kill him? That was three times he’d tried to rape her. And he’d already raped Trixia, Gret’s friend. Dragons’ Realm would be better off without him.
No, that was someone else’s job—a job Roberto would relish.
Simeon sank to his knees, clutching his belly. “Unocco,” he screamed.
So he couldn’t mind meld. He hadn’t imprinted with Bruno’s dragon. He was merely riding it. Ezaara turned her back on Simeon. Hands shaking, she slung the quivers over her shoulder and picked up the sack of opaline headbands.
Snarls ripped through the air. There was a thud on the ledge behind her.
She spun.
A dark dragon was perched near Simeon, its eyes slitted in greed as its nostrils flared, sniffing his blood. It licked at the entrails poking from his wound. Simeon screamed. The beast snatched him up by the ankle. His head whacked the granite ledge as it took to the sky.
With a violent snarl, another dark dragon closed in. Snatching Simeon’s arm in its jaws, it yanked. Simeon’s screams sliced through Ezaara, chilling her to the bone. Dropping the sack and her sword, she clapped her hands over her ears, unable to look away as the snarling dragons slashed Simeon’s body with their talons.
His screams stopped. Simeon’s blood rained over the ledge. Chunks of his body fell down to the valley. A horde of dark dragons dived, squabbling and flaming each other in a race to devour what was left of him. Ezaara tiptoed to the edge of the ledge. Thank the flaming dragon gods, it was too dark to see. She fell to her knees. Gods, oh gods. Her stomach convulsed. She vomited.
Oh gods. She retched again.
“Ezaara?” Still writhing in the sky with Unocco, Zaarusha unfastened her jaws from around his neck. With an anguished roar, Unocco flapped off, dodging dark dragon flames. Zaarusha thudded down beside Ezaara, her mighty chest heaving and head covered in soot.
“Are you hurt?” Ezaara asked, battling to keep the screams of the dark dragons at bay so she could think. Her breath shuddered out of her. She shook her head, trying to dislodge her memories of Simeon grasping at her breeches, trying to violate her.
“A few blisters and scratches. I know you’re shaken, but we must leave. Shadow dragons are still exiting the main cavern and more are flying over Dragon’s Teeth.”
Ezaara fastened a headband around her forehead, and thrust her weapons and the sack of opaline headbands into Zaarusha’s saddlebags. She stopped to retrieve her sword and retched again at the sight of Simeon’s blood—the memory of his shredded flesh raining over Dragons’ Hold.
Wearily, she wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve and cleaned her sword in the snow. Then she clambered into the saddle and slumped over Zaarusha’s spina
l ridge, hugging it tight. She wouldn’t wish that horrific end on anyone.
Zaarusha took to the sky, leaving Dragons’ Hold and the remains of Simeon behind.
Zens’ Lair
In the very first chamber Fenni entered, he let his mage light die, squinting against the yellow light bathing the roughly-hewn cavern. Velrama and Sorcha were tied to beds, breathing as if they were asleep, but with open unseeing eyes that stared at the ceiling. Strange clear tubes ran out of their arms and necks. Fenni grimaced. Both mages were only wearing undergarments, their skin tinged blue with cold. Slivers of their flesh had been sliced away. Tiny puncture wounds ran up and down their arms, torsos and legs. He shuddered.
Along the stone walls at the back of the room on either side of an archway were tanks. As tall as Fenni, the tanks contained forms that resembled Velrama and Sorcha, smaller, but somehow fully-grown.
“What manner of evil is this?” Danion waved his sword at the tanks and imprisoned mages. “This must be where Zens made those evil mages.”
“There may be tharuks about. Let’s take a look around before we do anything else.” Fenni jerked his head toward the tunnel to the larger chamber that Roberto had shown him during their mind-meld.
“Good idea.” Danion nodded.
Danion and Gret prowled toward the archway, swords drawn. Fenni held his hands at the ready.
Before they could peek into the next chamber, a noise sounded behind them.
Fenni whirled. The door slid open.
Roberto, Amato, and Kierion rushed inside, panting.
Fenni held a finger to his lips. Roberto nodded and took the lead, taking them into a massive cavern. Benches ran in rows along the length of the cavern and, beside them, tharuks grew in tanks the height of fully-grown men. Still more enormous tanks lined the walls, the size of houses.
Floating in the tanks were what looked like bundles of black rags. Apart from that, not a single tharuk was in the room.
“Zens’ dark dragons,” breathed Danion. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Neither had Fenni. “Or this strange yellow light.” He waved a hand at the huge overhead methimium crystals emitting a yellow glow that bathed the chamber.
Riders of Fire Complete Series Box Set books 1-6: YA Epic Fantasy Dragon Rider Adventures Page 140