Heart of the Staff - Complete Series

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  Ocker leant against her and nibbled at her beak for a moment before standing up abruptly to leap into flight, plunging down the bluff face and swooping to a landing on his customary gargoyle on Razzorbauch's roof. He gave himself a thorough shake and sorted through the feathers of one wing. He had just switched to the other wing when Razzorbauch and Ugleeuh appeared on the balcony below.

  “Why this is your keep!” said Ugleeuh. “I expected the Dark Continent. Aren't we on a dragon hunt?”

  “We most certainly are, my dear,” said Razzorbauch, ushering her to the stone bench by the balustrade, “but we do need to prepare ourselves a bit before we go on.”

  “Aren't you taking me with you?”

  “Of course I am. There happens to be a small matter we need to discuss first, however.”

  “Yea,” thought Ocker, as he leant out over the balcony, “and maybe I need to relay hit to Demonica. She'd pay right smart to keep up with these small matters you share with your new queinte, you swyving old lecher.” Suddenly he slipped, flapping his wings to regain his footing, leaving his heart racing for fear he had been seen.

  “You're going to tell me how dangerous it will be, aren't you?” said Ugleeuh, not noticing Ocker. “Well, Father's told me all about dragons, for one thing. And for another, I see no point of worrying when you're more powerful than a whole herd of them...”

  “You're quite right, dear,” he said with a serious look.

  “In fact, I had no intentions at all about bringing up any sort of dangers. That is, unless you consider your mother dangerous. And I, for one, consider Demonica far less dangerous if she's well rested. I was wanting to suggest that we stop by Head on our way to pick her up first thing in the morning.”

  Ocker nearly lost his footing all over again. “No wonder this young queinte looks so much like Demonica!” he thought. “The old whore'd pay right smart to find out about Razzorbauch's affair with her very own daughter.”

  Ugleeuh was on her feet at once. “Demonica?” she sputtered as she came to rest against the balustrade. “I'm afraid I wasn't expecting her to do anything with us, after her awful reception. She certainly had no use for me.” A breeze rattled the leaves in the nearby trees. She rubbed her bare arms and turned about to face him.

  “I think I can put you at ease, dear,” said Razzorbauch. “The problem was my timing. She was still smoldering over a spat of ours when we showed up. She merely took it out on both of us. She regrets her behavior. She'd like to put things to rights...”

  “She told you that?”

  “Well I've not seen her, but she did say once that she wanted to get to know you. My word. She certainly could teach you things my far-sighted brother refused to.”

  “I find that hard to believe. She was...”

  “Fiddlesticks. She's forever keeping everyone around her guessing. It's her way of controlling people.”

  “Even you?”

  “She tries it,” said Razzorbauch. “Demonica is Demonica. Let this maneuver of hers pass and you'll find that you two have things in common...”

  “Indeed!” thought Ocker as Razzorbauch continued: “But for now, I think she could be quite a help with the dragons.”

  Ugleeuh crossed her arms and tapped at a tooth. “Well,” she said with a thoughtful sigh, “I might have enjoyed it, had she been civil...”

  “And she will be, dear. Just give her the time she needs.”

  “Speaking of time, do you think there'd be time for a bath before supper? I think I might go inside.”

  “Supper will be ready whenever you are, dear,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze before turning away to plant his hands upon the stone rail. The breeze stirred his grey hair. He studied an owl sunning itself on a dead limb at the edge of the woods. “All right Ocker,” he said, drumming his fingers as he spoke out, “come on down here.”

  Ocker was startled by this. After a moment's shocked silence, he took flight and swooped down to the balustrade beside Razzorbauch.

  “So, bird. Were you up there spying on me, or do you have tidings to sell?”

  Ocker was still not over his start from being discovered, and worse yet, he had nothing to sell. He opened up his feathers like a pine cone and sleeked down. “I know a good deal of interesting things,” he said, “but I can't imagine some swyving harlot like you wanting to hear news about himself.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Spying.”

  “What?”

  “Yea. I was overhearing all kinds of things you'd be fool enough to pay for to find out about yourself. You pissen me off right smart!”

  “Do you have anything or not?”

  “Hit's worth one of your little hogs, if I do...”

  “I don't raise hogs...”

  “One of your peccaries, damn it!” rattled Ocker as he sprang into the air to hover before Razzorbauch's face. “Hit was a whole drift o' peccaries a-rooting just down the hill that I was a-watching from up where you were convinced I was a-spying on you. You may not raise them, but they run all through your woods. Cook me one, hair and all, if you want my news.”

  Razzorbauch was already leaning over the balustrade, peering for several long moments into the woods at the foot of the hill. Suddenly he grabbed up his staff, jabbing it in the direction of a trotting hog, far away at the edge of the woods, to heave it out of the distance onto the balcony like a dollop of hay, where it lay, sizzling and steaming. “Now,” he said, “up by your nest?” And with that, he went at the peccary with his staff to fling it far up the bluff face to Urr-Urr's ledge. “So. What's your bit of news?”

  Ocker still hadn't thought of any news. He stood on the balustrade, sorting through his feathers. “If I had a staff like that, hit would sure be easy, feeding our new brood,” he said. “How did you make hit do all that?”

  “Magic. And you need to know a few spells for unusual things. And it helps to store up some of your magic in it before trying anything big. Now what do you have to tell me?”

  “But if you put your magic into your stick, doesn't hit make you weak?”

  “Not if you know what you're doing,” said Razzorbauch. “Now, are you trying to swindle me? What's this news I just paid for, bird?”

  Ocker preened madly at the feathers in one wing. Suddenly, something in the other wing needed preening just as urgently.

  “Well?” said Razzorbauch.

  Ocker gave a furious shake. “You don't need your soldiers clearing brush, right?” he said. “I can't imagine you wanting them wasting your time. I mean, you surely want them doing something else when you could clear every bit of the brush south of the Gulf of Orrin with a wave of your stick...”

  “Now where did you see them?”

  “Right south of the gulf. Right near the limestone caves and that forest of leaning oaks. You surely don't want to pay for their time just to have them clear brush.”

  Razzorbauch knitted his brow with a look that made Ocker shudder. “No bird,” he said, “I most certainly do not.”

  Chapter 11

  “Well then,” said Razzorbauch as he appeared with Ugleeuh and Demonica amongst a handful of stela pines in the blinding light of a brick red landscape, sparkling with flashes of reflected sun. “Here we are on the tallest of the Fire Domes in the Mammvro.”

  Ugleeuh dropped to her haunches and swallowed hard, struggling not to vomit from the traveling spell. “Sure is bright,” she said, squinting through one eye as she propped herself to keep from toppling. “How could they ever call this the Dark Continent?”

  “The House of Dark, dear,” said Demonica. “Their empire now takes in the entire continent, though I do own respectable parts of it, such as the Mammvro, here.”

  “I've never so much as imagined such a red countryside,” said Ugleeuh as she picked up a piece of the glassy red obsidian which littered the ground. “It's the most stunning sight I've ever seen, even if it does leave spots before my eyes, but it's so desolate. There's nothing here but these gnarled old tre
es. What good is owning any of it?”

  “Oh, minerals, dragons. And that rainbow hued rock you're holding makes nice jewelry. I should have worn some this morning. Now those old trees might need some respect, dear. My stone grinders and I sawed up one to burn, once. We kept losing track, counting the rings, but that chunk of wood couldn't have been a day less than three thousand years old.”

  A shadow passed over them. Ugleeuh looked up with a start to see a deep green dragon with a turquoise crest, the size of a cow, gliding majestically for a row of openings into lava tubes running up the nearby dome. “It's a bird with teeth!” she cried, springing to her feet to shade her eyes. “And I swear I saw claws in its wings...”

  “You did, dear,” said Demonica. “And I trust you realize that this is one of the very dragons that we came for...”

  “I knew what it was.”

  Demonica was not listening. “Here comes another,” she said, touching Razzorbauch's arm.

  “Good,” he said, “I knew that this was the place, but until the first one swooped in, I hadn't quite spotted their caves. I was a bit further down, the time before. I spent all day, and I allowed that there was above two hundred dragon a-coming and going. That ought to suit my needs...”

  “Yes,” said Demonica. “They should suit us quite nicely.”

  “What if it saw us?” said Ugleeuh.

  “I doubt if it did,” said Demonica. “Had it seen us, it would be trying to set us alight, this minute. The pines hid us. That's why I changed into this terrible green kirtle before we left Head.”

  “Can you make out the cottonwoods in the wash below their caves?” said Razzorbauch as he hefted something heavy in his shoulder bag.

  Demonica saw where he pointed and looked up with a nod, squinting in the sunlight. “This side of their stand of sukere canna running up the wash?”

  “Right there,” he said. “Take Ugleeuh and go down there by spell and take cover, so the beasts won't see you. Each time one runs out, either take off his feathers or knock him out. I found an entrance, too small for them to get through, up near the top of their dome. I've got five pound of fiery nightshade. I'm going to smoke them out...”

  “I thought I was going with you, Uncle Razzorbauch...” said Ugleeuh.

  “Three or four good sized dragons and my staff and I will be utterly exhausted, my dear,” said Demonica.

  “I'll be right down,” he said, holding his staff against hers. “In the meantime, here.” Both staves glowed for a moment with a purple aura. “There. That will do a few more.”

  “Uncle Razzorbauch. I thought...”

  “Yes,” he said, suddenly looking her way. “I guess you have no staff. You might as well come with me. Take my hand.”

  In the next moment, Ugleeuh found herself tottering in the sliding talus of the neighboring volcanic peak, far above the dragon caves, listening to the calls of a gorge wren as she watched Razzmorten searching about in the rubble of pumice and obsidian.

  “Here's the hole,” he said.

  Ugleeuh hurried over on hands and knees in spite of her nausea and peered in just as he heaved in his sack of fiery nightshade.

  “Stand back!” he shouted.

  Ugleeuh scuttled away backward like a crab.

  The instant the sack hit bottom, he turned it to a glowing cinder with his Staff, sealing in its roiling column of acrid white smoke with a thundering smashing of rock which sent a shower of fragments skittering away down the mountainside.

  “I don't trust her, Uncle Razzorbauch,” said Ugleeuh as she stood and whisked at her skirts. “I thought this was our undertaking...”

  “It is...”

  “But she's in on it.”

  “Well no one who knows her ever really trusts her,” he said, “but this whole thing with the dragons was her idea in the first place. And these are her dragons, after all. And when we get to the coast with the beasts, it will be her ships that haul them across the sea to the plantation. Now. Ready?”

  “I guess. I still feel like throwing up.”

  “Then let's not make it any worse,” he said, setting his staff to hover in the air and stepping across it. “Let's fly. Just get on behind.”

  “Fly?” said Ugleeuh as she hiked her dress and stepped over.

  “Hang on as tight as you can,” he said as they sprang into the air over the slopes to shoot ferociously down the mountainside.

  Ugleeuh wailed out for half the distance in spite of what she may have wanted, just in time to stumble smartly into Razzorbauch's back as she fought to find her footing on the solid ground in front of Demonica.

  “I've not seen a one, yet,” said Demonica to Razzorbauch as she gave an impatient head to toe glance at Ugleeuh.

  “You will,” he said.

  At that very moment, an echoing bellow from the caves got their attention in time for them to see a dozen dragons charging out abreast into the open air, blinded by the stinging fiery nightshade fumes, snorting and gasping, flapping their wings and stumbling about.

  “Keep them blind!” shouted Razzorbauch as he ran toward the dragons with his staff leveled. “Don't let them spit flames! Freeze any that try to fly!”

  Demonica set to work at once, hurling crackling lavender bolts from her staff into the faces of beast after beast as they thundered from the caves, while Razzorbauch sent out a pounding hail of flashes from his, causing the plumage to fall free from the dragons' wings and bodies in cascading bundles and wads, as the terrified animals flapped themselves to nakedness, and the air filled with the stench of singeing feathers. More and more came in a frantic rush for fresh air only to be undressed in their bewildered frenzy, until at last the wash in front of the caves was filled with a milling herd of better than two hundred naked dragons, fenced in by a corralling spell cast by Demonica.

  Razzorbauch climbed a large red rock to stand above their heads. “Peoc'h!” he roared, addressing them in Headlandish. “Silence!”

  At once, the only sounds to be heard were the rattling of cottonwood leaves and the nearby calls of laughing quail. As he stood there counting them, a young male who happened to be outside of Demonica's spell, was carefully inching away. Suddenly he broke into a run for the caves. Razzorbauch jerked his staff aloft at the sight of him, shooting him with a brilliant beam of ruby light from the Heart in its end, blowing him apart with a thundering concussion which left a hole in the ground big enough to bury several dragons, as a peppering of dirt and flecks of flesh rained down through the leaves of the cottonwoods.

  “N'eus ket tu da,” said Razzorbauch, speaking out over the hushed herd. “There's no way to. There's no way anyone else could possibly break away and run. But you see what would happen if he could. From this moment on, for as long as you live, you are each my chattel. Now. I'm going to walk to the sea and you're going to follow me. It will be a few days to get there and a few more to wait for ships which will take you to my plantation.” He paused to look over their numbers for a moment before clambering down from his rock. “Poent eo mont kuit!” he cried with a wave of his staff. “It's time to leave!” And with that, he began walking.

  The dragon multitude formed a lumbering queue as they followed, utterly beaten, as Demonica set out in their wake with her staff. Ugleeuh picked up one of the great green feathers littering the ground, every bit as long as she was tall and was astonished at how very light it was. “My!” she said. “These are light as a feather.”

  “One does expect that with feathers, dear,” said Demonica.

  Ugleeuh thought it would make quite a souvenir, but tossed it aside at the thought of the long walk ahead. “So,” she said, catching up. “'Mammvro.' Wouldn't that be Headlandish for 'Motherland?'“

  “It is. It's the dragon word for it, really. I call it that because of the dragons. The rest of the continent calls these the Red Lands or the Red Desert...”

  “Dragon word? They can talk?”

  “Every bit as well as we can...”

  “If they can do that
, could they have been the ones who planted all those hills of sorghum up and down the wash?”

  “Oh, they most certainly did, dear. But that's not sorghum, it's sukere canna, and I'm astonished that you're not already acquainted with...” Without warning, Demonica turned with a gasp to face a feathered meteor of fury plunging straight for her from the sky, opening its jaws as it came. Immediately she fired a bolt from her staff into the dragon's face to stop its flame as it pounced onto her shoulders, yanking her into the sky by the cloth of her kirtle to kick and fling about with her staff as she passed low over the heads of the naked herd. Suddenly she lost hold of the staff. “Razzorbauch!” she screamed as it pitched end over end into the dragons.

  Razzorbauch wheeled about with his staff to point the Heart, just in time for her dress to tear free, flinging her through the crown of a bushy juniper to bounce and roll to a stop in the coarse red sand. As the dragon churned about to see where she had gotten to, Razzorbauch shot a searing ruby bolt from the Heart, igniting the beast in a pounding flash that streaked out crimson in all directions, falling from the sky in sizzling ribbons of flame to tumble away over the sand as smoking cinders.

  ***

  The Yellow Rose Tavern was a huge three and a half storey wattle and daub house that had only been standing for three years, just down the street from Fates' Hospital for the Sick and the Silver Dragon. Its upper storeys overhung the first floor nearly to the middle of the alleys on all sides. Minuet and Bethan rented a long room at the top under the roof in front, which opened onto a balcony far above the street between two great crucks under the gable, and which also peeped out from a tiny window under a thick blanket of thatch in the roof itself. They always ate breakfast and supper downstairs, but they usually ate their dinner at the Silver Dragon, since it was next to the hospital.

  “So what was the reason Sergeant Bernard brought us down here to the inn?” said Bethan as she addressed her collards with bread and knife. “I didn't quite catch what he was saying.”

  “He didn't say much,” said Minuet. “I guess that there was some sort of uproar at the Silver Dragon right after we left, yesterday. He thought we'd be safer down here.”