The Dragon Eaters

by Duke Kittle

  Chapter 2

  Many years later…

  The sea stretched on for an endless expanse off to the east. It seemed like such a long journey to cross the Selian Sea in order to reach the city of Likonia. But most of the trip lay behind the Madrigaardian trade ship christened Thorn’s Side. A frigate, the Thorn’s Side was not known so much for its carriage capacity as its speed in delivering its goods. For any other trade ship, the journey would have taken two months to complete. The Thorn’s Side had made the run across the Selian Sea in a mere three weeks.

  Tina was thankful for the ship’s haste. She was thinking about the assignment given to her by the wizards’ guild, the Council of Stars, while she watched the sunrise. One statement stood out in her mind. It had been given to her by the grand master of the House of Contemplative Stars, the wizards’ guild’s branch which dealt with prophets. ‘Discover the truth upon which light is shed in the knowledge granted by those who are dead.’ Another person might have been irritated by a cryptic hint, but Tina knew better of prophets. The flow of events appeared to them only in expansive equations. They could tell only as much as they could decipher.

  The sound of boots thudding against the deck of the ship drew Tina’s attention. Standing on the railing, she looked back over her shoulder at the Madrian Shepherd who approached. She recognized him by both his uniform and the dark and light patches in his fur. He was, after all, the only pure-blooded Madrian Shepherd on the ship.

  “Wizard van Schtoffen,” the first mate said, “we will be arriving in Likonia within the hour.”

  Tina nodded at him. Her voice was soft as she spoke, but the tone was substantial for one of her size. “Thank you, Allister. Please tell Captain Morgan I will be disembarking upon arrival.”

  The first mate bowed his head. “Aye, Lady. Would you like your traveling bag brought up from the cargo before we make landfall?”

  Tina shook her head. “No. Thank you, Allister. I will retrieve it myself on the docks once it’s been unloaded.” She smiled. “It would be like looking for a pin in a stack of sewing needles if you went searching for it right now.”

  The Madrian Shepherd bowed his head once more. “As you wish, Wizard van Schtoffen.” He cut her a proper salute, his hand straight as he touched his fingers to his temple.

  Once the first mate had departed, Tina took one more look over the side of the ship. She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes, then let it out slowly as she smelled the salty air of the sea. “Time to begin.”

  Tina leapt down from the railing and landed gracefully on her feet. She crouched down onto all fours and ran across the deck in more the manner one might expect of a feral long strider than a wizard. Her unique stature had caused Tina to adopt some unorthodox practices. One of those had been learning to run on her hands and feet rather than simply striding in a bipedal fashion.

  The six inch tall wizard crossed the deck of the Thorn’s Side swiftly and, upon reaching the door leading to the passenger quarters, slipped through the space between the door and the deck. When she emerged on the other side, she dusted off her purple, wizard’s robe and looked around the relatively large hallway. Her eyes fell on the one doorway on the right wall which suited her size. Walking to it, she touched the gold-plated handle. It rested in the center of a circular doorway with long sun flares stretching from the handle to the outer edges of the stone door. The door looked as though it had been positioned between the cracks of the hall’s wooden wall. She turned the handle and pulled the door open, then stepped inside.

  Tina reached for the single, unlit torch sitting on the wall and pulled it free of its mantle. Upon her touch, the end of the torch ignited with dancing flames and brightened the stone hallway into which the wizard had just entered.

  When Tina reached the end of the hallway, she placed the torch into a mantle next to the open archway, and the fire extinguished. The room beyond was made from the same cobbled stone but decorated with Tina’s personal touch. She crossed through the silver light of a crescent moon which fell into the room through a single window. Though it was day outside of her little home, she enjoyed the sight of the night sky through her window.

  Tina’s gaze swept over the whole of the room as she checked to make sure she’d put everything back in its proper place. A book lay on the wooden table next to the head of her bed. She noted the presence of the book and walked to it, picking it up from the table and opening it to where a feather quill marked her spot. Removing the quill, Tina checked her writing, and then placed the quill back into the book with only the writing tip protruding from it. She turned to the crystal bookcase standing next to her bed and placed her hand on one of the shelves. When she pressed on it, the shelves slid down, and another row of books appeared on a new top shelf. Tina saw from where she’d taken the book and returned it to its proper spot.

  With the book back where it belonged, she took another look around her room. It had taken her a very long time to achieve the spell which enabled her to create the small pocket dimension in which she’d built her portable quarters. For all the effort, practice, mistakes, and revisions, it had been well worth it.

  After glancing at the bottle turned on its side in the fireplace, Tina walked over to it and knelt down. She gently tapped the glass with her fingers. The tiny embers flowing around inside the bottle grew brighter and gathered around the spot where she had touched. She had not fed them yet this morning. Turning back around, Tina faced her bed and extended her hand. One of the drawers under the bed opened, and a slip of parchment floated out of it and drifted to Tina’s hand.

  After closing the drawer, Tina picked up the bottle of everglow flames and set it on the mantle. She tore the slip of parchment into little pieces and removed the cork from the top of the bottle. The wizard was careful to make sure all the pieces fell into the bottle before she corked it again.

  The embers within the bottle swished and swirled around the parchment, and it was swiftly incinerated. Newly fed, the embers grew into drifting flames which danced about inside the bottle happily.

  Smiling at the reaction, Tina pulled the bottle down from the mantle and placed it back into the fireplace. With everything in its place in her room, Tina walked back to the archway leading out and reached for the torch on the mantle.

  Before she touched it, she heard a soft clinking sound from within her room. Glancing back over her shoulder, she looked for the source of the sound. A knowing smile crossed her lips when nothing moved. She turned her head to look forward and then glanced back quickly to see her inkwell land on the fireplace mantle, tucking its long, grasshopper-like legs against its sides.

  “Caught you.” Tina adjusted her glasses and pointed back at the end table next to her bed. The inkwell rattled its base against the mantle on which it had settled, but resigned itself to returning to the end table. With another two hops, it was back where it belonged.

  Tina wiggled her whiskers at the inkwell and then picked up the torch from the mantle. When it failed to ignite, she looked at the torch through her spectacles. A small, runic circle appeared in the center of the right lens. Through it, she could see the series of equations she had placed on the torch to give it its function.

  Little sparks of light jumped off the torch as Tina used her gift to correct a fault which had appeared in the spell. She drew her hand away from the torch once the spell equations were corrected and blinked her eyes. After another brief examination, she determined that the spell was once again working properly.

  She squeezed the torch, and it ignited, coming to life and casting firelight about the hallway. Tina was curious as to what had caused the faulty equation and looked at the mantle next to the door. The runic circle in her lens showed a deteriorated equation in the holding spell. It was a more complex function than the simple firelight spell on the torch and would take time to fix. She made a mental note to do so later, but with it being outside of her room proper, she
knew it would not interfere with the room being moved.

  Once Tina had replaced the torch in the mantle at the entry end of the hallway, she pushed the door open and stepped outside. Closing the door, Tina pressed her palm against the handle. She had turned it clockwise to open it. This time she turned it counterclockwise, and the handle detached. Both the doorway and the handle shrank in size until the door vanished altogether. The handle rested in Tina’s hand, no larger than a pebble relative to her size. She lifted her star-shaped necklace and placed the door handle into the center of it so she could lock it into the socket.

  The sound of footsteps drew Tina’s attention once again. She looked down the hallway as she heard the rapid steps of the cabin boy. A black-furred, feline boy without a shirt, wearing old trousers a little too big for him, was running down the hallway from the door at the end. She stepped back out of his way when she saw him carrying an empty bucket as he headed for the deck. Tina mused to herself that, for his young age, the cabin boy, Thomas, was a good worker and tended to his duties diligently.

  The mouse wizard had retaken her place on the railing of the Thorn’s Side to watch as the sailors and longshoremen of the ship got up and went about preparing the ship for docking. It had been a swifter process that morning than she had normally witnessed on the voyage across the Selian Sea. Preparations for docking and unloading cargo made for more work for the sailors than the everyday chores of maintaining and sailing a ship across sea. With the arrival being in the early morning on top of that, the day had to start earlier.

  Tina had been preoccupied with observing the sailors when the barking of the first mate caught her attention. “Captain on deck!”

  A grey-furred feline woman stepped out of the passenger quarters with her hand on the rapier at her hip. She was dressed in the same uniform as the first mate, marking her as a merchant marine, though her uniform was worn in a more casual fashion. In fact, Tina thought the eye patch the captain wore along with the red bandana hanging around her neck made her look more like a pirate.

  “Is the port in sight yet, Allister?” Captain Morgan asked as she pulled her bandana up from around her neck and placed it on top of her head. She slipped her captain’s hat on over it.

  “Aye, Captain.” The first mate cut a brisk salute. “The crow’s nest called out half an hour ago.”

  “Thank you, Allister. I take it you’ve told the crew to start prepping the cargo?”

  “Aye, Captain. All preparations for landing are being made.”

  Captain Morgan nodded and returned the salute. The first mate stepped away as the captain took a few moments to observe the deck and the sailors going about their work. She caught sight of Tina standing on the railing and flashed the Mateesh woman a toothy smile before approaching. “All set for your big investigation, Wizard?”

  Tina wiggled her whiskers. “As prepared as the Council of Stars can make me, Captain.” She smiled. “You seem in good spirits this morning, Jessica.”

  Captain Morgan patted the railing next to Tina. “I’ll always love the sea and my ship, Tina. But it’s nice to set foot on dry soil once in awhile.”

  Tina giggled and then turned her head to look back over the railing. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Likonia we haven’t already talked about on the voyage over, Jessica?”

  “Actually, yes.” Captain Morgan turned around and folded her arms as she leaned against the railing. “I remembered something last night after you’d gone to bed. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Oh?”

  “It just so happens that you’re not the first wizard to come to Likonia. I heard some talk among my men about visiting with the crew of another ship.”

  Tina lifted her eyebrow and reached up to adjust her glasses as she looked at the captain. “Visiting?”

  “Gambling, more like,” Captain Morgan replied. “They were talking about a trinket one of the sailors had won and how the sailor he’d won it from had said it was given to him by a wizard on ship. It turned out the sailor he’d won it from was aboard a trade ship called the Water Walker.”

  “An interesting tidbit, I admit,” Tina replied, looking back at the water, “but what does it have to do with Likonia?”

  Captain Morgan shrugged. “I saw the departure manifest in port before we left. Seems that the Water Walker was headed for Likonia.”

  “Have you been snooping around for something, Captain?” Tina peered over her spectacles at Captain Morgan.

  The grey feline laughed. She shrugged her shoulders innocently. “I always check the departure manifest before leaving port. And besides, you know what they say about Kylathians.”

  “I thought you were born in Madrigaarde.”

  The captain smiled toothily at Tina. “I could have been born in the sky, and I’d still be born a Kylathian, Tina.”

  Tina smiled. “That you would. Just be careful. Curiosity killed the Kylathian, you know.”

  Captain Morgan simply laughed.