The Dragon Prince

by Rex Jameson

  She didn’t turn to look at him or thank him. She wouldn’t dare. She knew how much it stung to be rejected—only too well. She knew his soul was shattered and that it would never heal.

  “When you return,” Prince Haloisi said, his voice as strong as his jaw, “come find me in the forests. We will hunt for a day and night. Let me join you in your killing field and splash myself, as you do. Let me be your knife, as near to you as a whisper, so that we might share in nature’s blessing.”

  His brother Mavar pushed Haloisi aside.

  “When you return,” Mavar said, his long, braided dark lock of hair flowing down his fine silk doublet, “come find me in the trees, and we will flee like leopards into the night. Through the branches and into darkness, where not even the stars can spy on us.” His voice became low, in a false whisper. “And when you’ve tired of the chase, and only then, will we entangle with fae and—”

  “That’s quite enough!” Queen Vanitari exclaimed.

  The two boys pushed at each other.

  “A strong mare?” King Calenanna asked, his eyes wide and hands on his hips. “For me to order?”

  He shook his head. “It is you who has put me in this position!”

  “She can be the stallion,” Mavar insisted. “She can mount me anytime she—”

  “I said that’s enough!” Vanitari insisted as Haloisi punched his brother in the chest twice.

  Nessamela stood up and brushed the grass from her knees and busied herself with her hair, pulling it into a bun to avoid having to say anything. She avoided eye contact with the two princes, but she was deeply and profoundly pleased. She felt like her cheeks had gone from bright red to dark purple, and she was smiling so widely that teeth showed.

  “When you return from this mission,” the Queen said, “you will choose a husband.”

  Nessamela smiled and nodded quickly to Vanitari. She didn’t answer, not with words, but she projected it with a confidence that rolled across the tree canopy and into the heavens. A single thought went through her mind.

  A stallion doesn’t have to choose.

  She looked at each prince and winked, once with each eye. Mavar giggled as she turned around. She paused for the briefest moment as she saw Belegcam. He leaned back limply with his knees touching the ground. She felt he might topple if she breathed on him the wrong way.

  “Come,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder.

  He came back to life but still distracted and confused. “Right… Orcs.”

  “We prepare for battle,” she said. “Get the men and women ready. We leave immediately.”

  He inhaled and nodded. He sucked his bottom lip in and looked up at her briefly, as a wave of giggles spread amongst the nobles.

  “Yes, my captain,” he said. “Right away.”

  16

  The Dragon Burns Hotter

  The Dragon Prince Jandhar Rasalased stared into the ocean outside of Dona. A thousand feet out, one of his troop transport ships had been converted into a funeral barge. Nintil rested atop it, and the handful of sailors who had manned it into the ocean had disembarked onto a small boat. They rowed hard, knowing what was coming.

  His favorite dragon Jahgo nudged his shoulder. He rewarded the black-and-yellow creature with a head rub with one hand. In the other, he held a pigeon homed to Scythica where his mother and brother were. He had already dictated a message to them. It spoke of the death of one of his dragons. It described the encounter with the goat-headed creature. It reassured them of his good health and the plan to attack the force again with his dragons and army of 10,000 pikemen, archers, and engineers.

  “You don’t have to attack them alone,” Etcher Woodroe said. “Send a message to Kingarth. You have pigeons homed there. The new Regent will surely help you.”

  Jandhar’s face began to twitch as he watched the dragon floating out of sight on the barge. He couldn’t distinguish the green body of his scaled son Nintil.

  “You do not know the Surdel people,” Jandhar said softly.

  “I think I understand—”

  “You are Crelloni,” Jandhar said. “These people… they’ve caused all this. Maybe they even embrace the chaos and destruction.”

  “Orcus is not Surdeli,” Etcher said. “I’ve talked to some of the local people. They say he’s a demon lord. That’s why you saw him grow. He leads the undead. He’s their lord.”

  “Have you noticed there are no demons in Visanth?” Jandhar asked. “Does that not tell you something?”

  “Listen to me,” Etcher said, “there are two demon lords and maybe a handful of demons roaming the surface of this world right now, but there will be more if we do not help the Kingdom of Surdel and the dark elves—”

  “The dark elves!” Jandhar scoffed, spitting on the ground.

  Jahgo grew restless behind his shoulder, pacing and swiping his tail in agitation at the prince’s building anger. He knew Jandhar better than the prince knew himself.

  “A thousand years ago,” Jandhar said, “a dark elven army marched across Visanth toward the Small Sea. They say it marched for Scythica. They say the dark elves thought themselves better than The Empire—that it was an invading force meant to snuff out my forefathers. The dark elves don’t think that anymore. They’re all dead now.”

  Etcher grew very silent. He stared out at the Small Sea. “They tell a very different story south of Corellin.”

  “I bet they do,” Jandhar said, kicking at the dirt. “It seems like the Crelloni have a lot of tall tales and fables, but here’s the true story. That elven army was destroyed, and my ancestors moved from elven city-to-city, annihilating every last one of them. You want to know why the Visanth Empire doesn’t have a demon and undead army roaming around it? We took care of that problem long ago. No dark elves; no demons.”

  He spat on the ground again. “Problem solved.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Etcher said. “Perhaps if the dark elves would have been purged here also—a long, long time ago—then no demons or undead might be in Surdel. We’ll never know. The fact is… they’re here now, and the Kingdom of Surdel would help you annihilate them and this undead army.”

  Jandhar did not acknowledge the statement. He continued to stroke his dragon Jahgo. Etcher sat down, crossed his legs, and appeared to meditate.

  Jandhar looked to his left in irritation then searched behind him for his surgeons.

  “Captain Talso!” he called. “Talso!”

  The young, tanned man pushed his way through the crowd and looked over the twitching tail of the black dragon. “Yes, My Lord?”

  “Have the surgeons take a look at my dragons. We must not lose another one to carelessness and neglect.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Talso merged back into the crowd. His cries for surgeons carried back to Jandhar. The prince nodded to himself, checking off a mental list of things he needed to do. Check the dragons. Burn the ship. Mourn ever so briefly. Order the men to move north, burn everything in sight, and leave nothing for the demons. Find the well-dressed creature that killed Nintil and execute him. Kill Orcus. Kill Theodore Crowe. Kill the Regent. Kill the Eldenwalds. Kill anyone who resisted him and pacify this region for Visanth. Return to the Empire. Make more dragons. Burn a memory of his father into every nation along the Small Sea and into the Great Ocean. Burn bright like his father told him to.

  “So, is that really why you’re here in Surdel?” Etcher asked.

  Jandhar’s eyes grew wide. For a moment, he thought he might have mumbled his internal checklist.

  “Are you here to kill every dark elf?” Etcher asked. “Continue the purges of your family? Punish them for their role in conjuring this demon lord?”

  Jandhar released the homing pigeon and watched it flap west and then south.

  “I will help purge this kingdom of evil,” he said cryptically. “I will rid it of the disease that has taken root here.”

  He thought about the Eldenwalds and the assassin they had sent across the Sm
all Sea. He wasn’t really speaking of the undead, Orcus, or the elves.

  “The demons and undead are a symptom of the greed and sloth of this nation,” Jandhar said. “Our ambassador tells us the Eldenwalds are a family who mocks their allies and rejects their council. These same dark elves you seem to care for told King Aethis and his ancestors of these demon lords, and the Kingdom of Surdel didn’t take them seriously. Not once until it was too late. This cancer beneath the earth was neglected and left to rot like trash in the streets. Left there to fester and befoul the air until some future descendent or foreign aid came to fix their problems. And that’s why I’m here. With fire, I will cleanse the air and earth and rid this nation of its disease. That’s what the Empire does. Fix things. Make things right again.”

  Etcher turned back to the Small Sea.

  Jandhar adjusted his black headscarf and covered his mouth and nose, so only his eyes showed. Then he closed his eyelids, clearing his mind of the pettiness and the politics to focus on the next task—the solemn funeral of his adopted son.

  Etcher cleared his throat and spoke through the scarf. “They tell a very different story south of Corellin.”

  Jandhar bit his lip and rounded on the old man to give him a piece of his mind just as Talso returned with three surgeons.

  “We’re here,” the lead surgeon said, pushing himself between Jahgo and Jandhar to inspect the dragon.

  Jahgo blinked lazily, accepting the inspection as he always had—just another daily routine.

  Jandhar forgot his dispute with Etcher, but the old man had no intention of letting it go.

  “This nation suffers,” Etcher said. “The Red Army decimated the south, killing men, women, and children.”

  “They say the Necromancer raised them all,” Jandhar said.

  “Some,” Etcher said. “Not all and not all the same. The people still suffer. I fear you would have them suffer more.”

  “That’s enough,” Jandhar said, waving off the surgeons but also Etcher’s pestering.

  The surgeon with his head in the mouth of Jahgo jerked backward and gave a reactionary thumbs-up. The two other surgeons reacted similarly with Jasmine and Zosa. Venzin, who had not been inspected yet, bobbed his head in anticipation. He nipped at Zosa, and both of the greens dug their claws into the dirt like kittens on fine rugs.

  “Fly, my children!” Jandhar said.

  He waved the dragons onward toward the west and the boat that held Nintil. With a powerful gale, Jahgo lifted off and Jasmine closed in behind him. The two greens shrieked and squawked, flapping hard to keep up. Within seconds, the black dragon’s flames streaked across the ocean. The oil slick spread around the barge, and the greens dove over and over while the white dragon Jasmine mirrored the sustained assaults of the alpha.

  “Ameazima!” Jandhar shouted. “Mother to sons and daughters, harbingers of fire and doom! I salute you again, Royal Mother! We gather here to mourn for your son Nintil. He died as you would have wished him to—not young in a nest somewhere, exploding as he breathed his first night air, but incinerating the damned and the undead with righteous fire. He fought alongside me and his brothers and sister. I know you are up there, Great Mother! I know you have been watching your sons and daughter from up there above the clouds, from your own stars in the heavens. Know that Nintil has made us all proud! Know that his bright star will join yours in the heavens! Know that we will avenge him!”

  The gathered men cheered heartily, raising pikes, bows, and their voices. They stomped their feet, shaking the ground with 20,000 sandals.

  “Gather your men!” Jandhar commanded. “Rejoin your regiments! We march north! Burn everything and kill the undead! Avenge Nintil!”

  The men cheered as they ran north and assembled themselves into rigid marching formations. Jandhar waved his hands to the army of assistants, who began disassembling tents and organizing supplies into carts. Etcher watched them wordlessly. He didn’t speak to Jandhar again that day or the next, which was fine with the prince. He appreciated and revered the old man for what he had taught him. His dragons would have died before their first molting without Etcher. But now was not the time for counsel. Now was the time for vengeance.

  17

  The New Paladins

  The paladin Cedric Arrington panted as he leaned against a rocky vein of Mount Godun. His family and friends, his fellow paladins, had been surrounded by the undead for weeks. They hadn’t really slept. At best, they’d had two to three hours of reprieve. They hadn’t eaten anything but grass and twigs, and their strength was waning.

  Allison’s swords had been the key to their survival. When she slept, he and Henry Claymore took over for her. They held the blades together to produce the bubble of holy light, but the bigger the protective shell that they needed, the more resistance that came from the swords. Holding the Twin Sisters together took all of his strength, and he found it harder and harder to maintain his grip. His muscles ached and cramped. His eyelids were as heavy as anvils. As the weeks wore on, the sphere retracted more quickly and disappeared for longer periods of time because they were only men and women, and they were so very tired. The undead never relented. The clashes happened every few minutes now.

  And every day, Orcus stared at Cedric from just 100 feet beyond the thicket. He leaned against his staff, glaring at them through black, sunken eye sockets. He had not exerted himself once. He let the hundreds and thousands of undead assault the shield instead.

  His general Julian Mallory howled and hissed at the paladins and frequently attacked the expanding and contracting shell. Sometimes, he climbed up the holy barrier, growling at the inhabitants from behind and atop the lightning. He threatened death on the paladins for burning his sister with their holy magic. She had apparently died some time later because Cedric hadn’t seen her since the dragons came.

  Cedric certainly didn’t lament the loss of the Mallory sibling. Any victory was appreciated, no matter how small. However, he did recognize the danger from the effect it had on Julian Mallory. The man was livid and dangerous. When the Blood Lord leapt onto the shield, his hands and feet melted as he scrambled across the surface, but he acted unharmed.

  Cedric was sure that the High Lord did it just to show his regenerative capabilities. The appendages grew back within seconds, and Julian paced along the tree line, growling and spitting at the paladins for still being there—for defying him and his demon lord. He was so fast that a false image of him sometimes appeared at the pivot locations of his patrol, a trick of Cedric’s eye in not being able to track the creature. The image often smiled at him for a second or two as his brain caught up to the speed of this demon spawn.

  Cedric knew his family and friends couldn’t keep this up forever. When they had heard the bell toll, they had grown brazen with their new empowerment. Their defiance here at Godun kept Orcus and much of his evil force in check. Cedric knew that simply keeping this threat occupied was ensuring that much of eastern Surdel was safer. However, that knowledge was small consolation. If Henry, Allison, or Cedric fell asleep together, the whole of the paladins would be lost, and only the dark elves would remain to fight the demons that were coming.

  Orcus and Julian reminded them of this fact daily through the bubble.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Orcus said. “You’re doomed. Give up on this ridiculous endeavor. You owe her nothing. Join me, and we will fight the true enemy of your world. Demogorgon. He will rise from the ashes of the Etyrian Empire. He will burn your world and leave nothing but ash and death. The dark elves… will soon be gone. Do not let the paladins disappear as well.”

  The dark elven prince Jayden had left their group two weeks ago. He traveled east, back to his homeland in Uxmal. He promised to beg his mother for reinforcements, but Cedric knew this was unlikely. Jayden too was convinced that Demogorgon was on the move in the underworld. There was only one place left in Surdel for the Prince of Demons to surface—the dark elven capital city, where a few thousand dark elves remain
ed. The last bastion of resistance of a race that once had millions across Surdel and Visanth, and the very same location that Jayden was trying to steal troops from.

  Even Cedric knew what answer Queen Jayla would give if she cared about her own people.

  “No,” he answered Orcus.

  Cedric stopped pressing the blades together for a moment and shook his friend and fellow Council member Henry Claymore.

  “Henry,” he said as the man’s plate shoulders rattled against each other.

  “What?” Henry mumbled. “I just ended my shift. It can’t possibly have been four hours yet.”

  “It’s not,” Cedric said as he rammed the blades together, burning a dozen undead who tried to take advantage of the momentarily relapsed bubble.

  “Let me sleep,” Henry begged, closing his eyes again as he nestled against the rocky mountainside.

  Cedric kicked Henry’s greaves and cursed as he struggled to hold the Twin Sisters together.

  “We have to go,” Cedric said.

  “Go where?”

  “East,” Cedric screamed over the rush of the shield.

  “What’s East?”

  “Sleep,” Cedric yelled. “Food. We cannot win here. We have to break out of this stalemate.”

  Henry looked past Cedric at the hundreds of fiery green eyes staring at him from the darkness in the trees.

  “We need to find the Holy One,” Cedric said. “She’s given us these powers, but she hasn’t given us the numbers to make a difference!”

  Henry nodded and pushed against the shoulders of the slumbering Allison, her son Sylas, and daughter Sarah. The young man rolled onto his side, still clad in his initiation armor. He hadn’t been anointed, but they weren’t fighting demons yet. His armor protected him from the claws, rusted pikes, and swords of the undead.

  Of course, Cedric worried for all paladins, but he feared for his children most of all. Months ago, he would have done anything to stop them from being initiated into the Order of the Holy One. Now, their initiation ceremonies couldn’t happen quickly enough.