Dragonsign
Gold & Glory
M H Johnson
Copyright © 2018 by M H Johnson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Thank You
1
It was a warm spring day as so many were in these parts, a fine morning for a walk through the hilly pasturelands. The sun blazed high above, but comfortably so at these elevated altitudes. A fresh spring breeze blew softly through the seas of grass below, invigorating the three excited youths that had appeared but moments before. The mercurial wind caressed their silvery golden locks and silken finery with its gentle kiss, abstract designs seeming to flow with a life of their own in the gentle breeze.
That few people in this fertile duchy had ever seen silk mattered not at all to the youths in question. As far as they were concerned, it was what princes wore in all the stories they had been regaled with as youngsters, snuggled up in a warm bundle, their rooms silent save for the fierce roaring of the winds outside their mountain home. That and their cousin’s hushed melodic voice, a gentle counterpoint to the fierce hunger of the angry storms battering their snug domain, enchanting them with many an animated story to pass away those long winter nights, so many years ago.
And so perhaps it was only fitting that they, too, should be dressed in silken finery on their own grand escapade, worlds away from anything they had ever known before. Standard de rigueur for the adventuring prince, so to speak, along with long shirts, hauberks really, of fine elven-made mithril mail. That the armor’s spell forged links were of a durability guaranteed not to burst from the blow of any mundane blade would alone have made them worth a king’s ransom. Even more noteworthy, the armor was of a magical nature such that it would also meld effortlessly into any other form the wearer might take, were the wearer an arcane shape-shifter as opposed to say, simply a boy who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet neither of these facts were such to give these three graceful youths a moment’s pause. Indeed, it would almost seem as if they took their armor and finery both for granted, as an actor would the stage props that allowed him to best assume his role.
Accompanying the princely attire were sets of elegant looking sabers made from the very same mithril alloy as was their armor. Said blades had a deadly looking grace which was more than just appearances, as the youths and the irked looking crow lecturing them both knew, for the blades were not only durable, but razor sharp as well. They were weighty enough to hack through an opponent's arm, keen enough to cut through any accompanying armor guarding said arm, and well balanced enough to be used with the grace and speed of an acrobat, dancer, or master swordsman.
All in all, the arms and armaments looked to be of a quality best suited to grace the forms of a king’s most deadly champions or the most fearsome of gladiators. Perhaps adorning even the heroic physique of the heir to a lost kingdom ready to tear legends from the bedrock of fate under his name.
Which of course made it all the more odd, thought the crow, who was at that moment favoring the boys before him with a particularly malevolent glare, to see such elegant attire on what looked like, to him, no more than a trio of eccentric spoiled princelings.
"And I tell you three again that we are completely unprepared!" exclaimed the crow, who was presently pacing back and forth before the three youths in question. "We have no packs, no equipment, no tents… we don't even have any food! And did any of you think to bring a change of clothes?" The angry little bird had begun to flap his wings in agitation, his outraged voice sounding more like a squawk than ever. "Oh, that's right, this whole event was unexpected! You got carried away with your roles, and everything after that point was an accident!"
The crow appeared to be working himself up into a tirade of unusual proportions. Not for the first time either, it seemed, as evidenced by the sighs directed the bird's way.
"Well,” continued the crow, “if you were so dead set on wrecking a master summoning, you could at least have thought to prepare a little more thoroughly for what might lie ahead, especially considering the fact that we can never go back home! And did you ninnies just have to bring me with you? I mean really, what were you thinking? And what, for goodness sake, do we do now? Did you guys even bring anything we might use to buy ourselves an edge in this land? Silver? Gold? Jewels? Anything!?" The bird in question emitted one final outraged caw before puffing up his feathers and turning his back on the three youths that had so pricked his ire.
"Oh let it go, Sorn," sighed one of the youths, sapphire blue eyes flashing in exasperation. "We told you we were sorry. I mean, it's not like we meant to bump into you or anything. We were just making a point, a demonstration if you will, that this world conquest idea wasn't the best thing to be done here.”
"Hanz has the right of it, and elegantly put indeed!" agreed a second youth, seemingly the mirror image of the first.
"Why, thank you, Fitz!" said the first youth happily.
"No, thank you, Hanz!" replied the second. "In any case, it's not like we meant to bump over your stand when we were doing our ‘Death of an Empire' scene! And we certainly didn't mean to spill the Water of Zervourchec all over the Portal of Power."
"Besides, Sorn," chipped in the third youth, "at that point, you had already landed smack in the middle of the portal, and the spirits would not have opened the doorway were you not also of the true blood like us, so you should be happy!” said the third youth, also a mirror image of the first two. “See, it doesn't matter that no one knows who sired you. You still were potent enough to be accepted through the doorway and not immolated on the spot. So if anything, you should be thanking us!"
The three lads beamed at the crow in unison, seemingly well pleased with the line of reasoning.
“Why, you…” the crow could barely sputter, and indeed seemed almost to be puffing up with outrage. Muttering what sounded like strangled oaths, the strange bird began growing before the suddenly hesitant youth's eyes. They were barely able to step back in time before a fourth lad stood before them. Silky dark hair a contrast to their silver gold, heir to the same aristocratic features and sapphire blue eyes, their kinship was obvious, for all that he wore plain woolens to their silken finery. He was taller, however, and lacked their fluid grace, replaced as it was with the gawky stance of late adolescence. The exquisite, almost supernatural beauty he possessed, similar to that of the boys before him, was also marred by a couple of wayward pimples. His benign appearance was deceptive, however, as shown by the startling speed with which he charged, sufficient to do any sprinter proud.
"Lieberman, I could kill you!" he screeched as he grabbed one of the boys before him and tossed him a good twenty feet, an action born of utter exasperation which sent the triplets laughing, the one on the ground included as he tumbled end over end harmlessly, his lighthearted grin giving evidence that he was none the worse for wear.
The now dusty youth looked up and grinned. “Sorry, Sorn, we didn’t mean to ruffle your feather
s!”
Even Sorn cracked the barest of smiles. He could only shake his head at what his cousins' antics had gotten him into this time.
"It’s not that I felt particularly good about the idea of our elders taking this world myself," Sorn conceded. "That's why I was taking the stance of the crow."
The crow, as even his somewhat silly and clueless cousins knew, was a classic symbol of caution for his people. A self-reminder that even incredible power would not leave one invulnerable to disaster if it was matched by unreachable arrogance. Not only a cautionary figure, the crow had, over time, also come to symbolize wisdom for his people. The crow was, in fact, the closest proxy that their people had to the idea of compassion for outsiders, as the bird was also given symbolic credit for weighing the strengths and weaknesses and overall worth of other cultures in total.
It was a form rarely taken, however. This was not simply because very few of his people had the raw talent, let alone years of disciplined training, necessary to take on the form of the crow, but also because to do so under such circumstances as he had done so would result in a blow to one’s social standing best not thought of, one that could take years to recover from, if ever.
Still, as his cousins well appreciated, this cause was important enough to Sorn that he had been willing to take the form to plead his case before the High Tribunal. Thus, out of respect for both his form as well as his maternal heritage, the court did indeed give consent to listen to Sorn’s plea, despite his very young age.
It had been a doomed gesture, Sorn had known that from the start. It was, however, all he could do. To hold fast to the vain hope that he would be able to touch someone’s heart regarding the beauty and majesty of this place, this land that he had so often studied himself through orb and scrying pool alike. The joy and beauty it held, the wonder and majesty of the various members of its races, their capacity for hope, laughter, sorrow and love. Similar in all ways to his people, save in form. All this he had desperately hoped to be able to convey, somehow, to the steely-eyed tribunal that had been gazing at him at that moment with such bemused contempt.
And so Sorn had waxed long and eloquent, doing his best to touch those steely hearts, noting with a fierce sense of satisfaction that at least one or two heads had condescended to give an infinitesimal nod in deference to one or another of the points he had made.
And it was then, of course, that his cousins had made their entrance. Sorn could only sigh at the painful recollection of how one awkward debacle had quickly followed another as a result, wherein a highly ordered tribunal had quickly been reduced to a chaotic outraged mob, the final disaster having catapulted the four of them to this strange and exotic world. It was a place Sorn had been willing to give his all to protect, a world he had long admired from afar, yet not a place he had exactly planned on being marooned on for the next hundred years.
And so here we are, thought Sorn, with that mixture of utter exasperation and bone-weary tolerance only to be found in people forced to do way too much caretaking for their younger relatives.
"All right," Sorn said, once again bringing his mind sharply to focus on the present as Lieberman stood up once again to join his cousins, slapping the dust from his fine silk pantaloons.
"Enough with the horseplay. We have some serious planning to do. First off, do any of you really understand what it means to be here as we are now?"
"Of course," Hanz replied with the same enthusiasm with which he always answered Sorn's frequent queries when they went over tomes of one sort or another. "We accidentally catalyzed the portal, and it sucked us here. And now we have a whole world to explore! We can go forth and do noble deeds, just like in the stories you read to us! Defeat and eat noble knights, capture evil wizards and suck out all their power, and free the animals from captivity!"
Fitz frowned. "Um… Hanz, I pretty much agree with you on the wizard part, sucking out essences might be fun, but I think the knights are supposed to be the good guys, and the animals are for eating. I don't think we are supposed to free them, I think we are supposed to eat them, or something. Right, Sorn?"
"Nonsense!" exclaimed a suddenly irked Hanz. "Of course the knights are the bad guys! They're always trying to spear us in all the stories! And they ride their horses, they don't eat them. So of course we're not supposed to eat the animals!"
"Um, Hanz, I don't think it's the horses they eat. I think it's the cows, and the chickens I think are for milking or something, and I am not sure what they do with the pigs," Fitz replied uncertainly.
"Eggs," Lieberman answered sagely. "The pigs are for the eggs. I believe they cut them open to get the eggs out, and then, hmm… I guess they resow them with their tails. It explains why they are so springy, the tails I mean."
Sorn adamantly shook his head. "That's not how it goes at all! The cows are for milking, the horses are for riding, the chickens are for the eggs, and the pigs are for eating.”
"Ah ha!" exclaimed Fitz with a note of triumph in his voice. "You think you know everything! Well, it can't be the chickens that have the eggs, because they don't have the springy tail to sew them back up with, only feathers! So how could it possibly be the chickens?"
"Excellent point, Fitz!" exclaimed Hanz happily.
"Why thank you, Hanz!" Fitz replied warmly
"No, thank you, Fitz!" Hanz smiled.
"You guys are being absurd," Sorn scolded. "It's the chickens that have the eggs, and they don't need to be cut open to get them, they just lay them. And the pigs, for the last time, don't have any eggs at all. The farmer just cuts him up and eats him." Sorn rubbed his suddenly throbbing head. "As for the pig's springy tail, that's anyone's guess."
"Well maybe you would knew best, Sorn," Fitz conceded with an evil grin. "After all, you did spend lots of time sneaking around in the kitchens."
"Fitz is right," Hanz chuckled. "I know for a fact that the cooks couldn't stand your sweet tooth, and kicked you out of the kitchens dozens of times!"
"The head cook kept telling you to get your grubby little claws away from her food!" Fitz recalled happily. "The whole kitchen heard that one! Really, Sorn, you should let us teach you a thing or two about sneaking!"
"Yes you should," Lieberman said to his suddenly crimson-cheeked cousin. "You're not very good at it. At the very least, you don't have any brothers to distract the guards!"
"That's true!" Hanz piped in. "If you had let us help you, we could all have gorged on sweets! You know the opening spells, and we know how to sneak!"
"And distract," added Fitz.
"Yes indeed!" smiled Hanz.
"Let’s just drop it," requested the embarrassed looking dark haired youth. "Besides, you don't know about the dozens of times I did get away with it, all on my own, thank you very much."
"Wow, that's impressive!" Hanz gave Sorn a thumbs up.
"Yes, good show Sorn, good show!" Lieberman grinned happily.
"I agree!" Hanz chimed in. "But that still leaves us with one very important question."
"I hesitate to ask," Sorn asked, "but what is it?"
"Who’s going to check the pig for eggs?"
A short time passed by way of a slowly waning afternoon sun. All seemed peaceful, the long grass rippling in the gentle gusts of wind, like waves rolling across a deep green sea. The youths walking along the hard-packed dirt road that cut through the grasslands couldn't help but look up from time to time and admire the lone eagle silhouetted against the cloud-swept sky, shrieking his sovereignty high above.
Said eagle might have thought little about the progress made by these seemingly land bound trespassers in his domain, but in truth, the youths kept a good pace despite their animated conversation. Indeed, more than one carefully concealed rabbit, frozen to stillness by their passing, would have been more than a little disturbed by their views on livestock, had they an ear for the language and a mind to understand it.
As it was, the windswept pasturelands soon fell to lowlands and the Darkwoods below. Logged according
to the duke's decree, in moderation, and only inside the woods, it had served as a steady supply of quality hardwood for shipwrights for decades without its majesty or size being diminished. Yet lately the woods had become inhabited by creatures deadlier than the innocent fox and squirrel. A creature wily enough to leave untouched the duke's axe men and save its claws for better prey.
Even the three youths and their now once again feathered companion found their conversation muted as they approached the woods. Sorn found his lecture lessening in volume until it was no more than a soft echo of what it had been but moments before, quickly absorbed by the surrounding trees. The light mood encouraged by the warmth and brightness of the day in the pasturelands above was also muted with the shade. Ebullience and friendly banter were seemingly transformed to quiet introspection by the thick foliage above that had so quickly turned afternoon to dusk. Well, except for Sorn, of course.
"In any case," the crow went on in his somewhat pedantic lecture, earning him an eye-roll or two from his cousins, though they dutifully listened. "I have determined that the key to our finding prosperity and harmony in this land is that we must learn to live within the rules and constraints of this world. If we were to hunt and eat a farmer’s cows, we would have that man's enmity and an enemy made. He could never appreciate that in the end, we were seeking to save him.
"But, Sorn," Fitz interjected, "if we need to eat the cow to live, and the farmer has the cow, how can we make the farmer happy so he won't be mad at us for taking his cow?"
"By paying for it!" Sorn declared triumphantly, completely unperturbed by the looks of confusion and distaste his cousins threw his way.
"The point is that people don't just grow or make things for free here," Sorn explained. "A farmer needs coin to buy furniture and tools, a craftsman needs coin to buy the farmer's produce."
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