The loran caught sight of the dragon rushing towards him; he lifted a hand in the dragon’s direction. A boiling cloud of ashen grey and carmine streamed from the magician’s palm, the exterior of the spell belying the sheer blazing firestorm of brimstone contained therein. Tac’quin mentally braced itself for the attack. The cloud washed over the dragon and for a moment it was as if it had been transported into a very world of fire. The tableau all about Tac’quin was one of a shimmering blue and white. Tac’quin felt the heat of the magic down to its core. The dragon’s scales and ocular skins impeded the instantaneous throes of incineration, but so great was the temperature of the conflagration that even a dragon could not withstand the torment of such an inferno. Pain and agony rippled through every fibre of Tac’quin’s being. Letting every last fragment of will coalesce into its hind legs, the dragon propelled itself out of the cloud and at the loran. At the same moment Tac’quin was leaping, Amyia and Palodar were too nearly upon their arcane attacker. And then, all at once, an explosion shook the air.
The magic that had been building upon Gnarlfang released its fury in a zealous eruption. A potent shock wave rippled outwards from Gnarlfang, preceding a fantastical emanation of light, launching churning coils and cones of magic in every direction. Cezzum was the first to embrace the shockwave; for his compassion he was catapulted backwards into tempest that still raged about them. The explosion permitted little time for recognition and before its sound had been processed, Amyia was flung into Palodar and the two friends were swept into the storm. Tac’quin sensed the pulsating air but a fraction before the dwarf and girl, yet as a moth enticed to a candle’s flame, could do naught to halt the end result and too was hurled where its companions were imprisoned. After the dragon had ignited the loran’s robe, the foe had once more conjured his barrier and the subsequent propelling force, which had dealt whatever fate was destined for his four victims, brushed gently over him. Little was the loran able to anticipate the effects following the saving grace that was the shockwave.
The glittering magic instantly froze in midair and was ripped again towards its epicentre as Gnarlfang, in one final attempt, struggled to contain the spell. No option had been left for the blade, no place, no device existed where it could discharge the energy. A second explosion thus ensued and with Gnarlfang having no might left with which to strangle that which strove to kill, the blade shot into the tempest after its master. The magic then resolved itself into a gargantuan column, throbbing with life as it burst upwards towards the stars in pillar fit for giants; the intertwining shafts of colour filling the entire width of the storm’s eye. It coruscated violently, venting all of its pent-up verve, before it collapsed downwards to the terrain below. All that remained within the cylindrical eye was a blackened patch of arid grass and the burning ashes of a once fine staff.
Senses were assailed by the roaring tempest. Solid ground was replaced by benighted buoyancy and any notion of orientation was supplanted by an environment of black and grey injected with erratic, blinding coruscations. Cezzum’s arms flailed about him, quite beyond his control, the wind playing with his makeup as a puppeteer would weave a show with his actors. A tug. A jab of pressure beat against his hip. Fear rose in the goblin as he thought a piece of debris had ripped through his side. With all his will Cezzum forced his hand, which was continually borne back by the current, to where the envisioned object had impaled him. Cezzum’s hand gripped his tunic and slowly, a single dragging finger at a time, clawed his way down his body; all the while he revolved through the air, assaulted by wind, cold and piercing torrents of rain thrusting at him from everywhere. The discovery made his heart lurch. No injury was present, naught could he feel there save the hilt of a sword once more in its scabbard. Cezzum let his arm once again fall prey to the feverish control of the storm. He smiled in the blustery pall; fain was he that the single gift from Filburn rested again at his side.
Then the goblin felt it. It was bewildering and confounding in its birth. Silence encircled him. Cezzum still hurled through the air but a cocoon of safety wrapped him. A pulse of light with its dulled thunder flashed outside and the goblin observed a leathery blanket covering him, golden and crimson in fleeting, sheer tint.
Tac’quin bound the goblin in the folds of its wings, protecting its leader from the elemental scourge. The dragon had beaten exhaustingly through the wind to reach its companion. With the goblin shielded within it, Tac’quin felt the last reserves of energy drain from its fibres, lethargy proclaiming the dragon as its dominion. With the spirit of a sailor caught within a deadly squall, the dragon and the goblin clutched to each other as best they could and weathered the storm as if they were a piece of driftwood in an ocean of foreboding.
Palodar’s fingers ached and were swollen from the intensity with which he held Amyia to himself. They too flitted about within the clutches of the tempest. Their helmets yearned to be ripped from their heads; the straps were strong indeed and the helms far from fleeing their wearers, simply sought to do them harm, the chinstraps digging coarsely against their skin; the constant shifting to and fro of the leather dug deeper and deeper into their flesh with each passing moment. Few thoughts passed through their minds as their attention was wholly focused on each other, for no bond is stronger than that forged in the desire to keep the loved chaste from the lascivious desires of death. And thus did the girl and the dwarf chaotically flutter inside the rampant tempest, both wishing for mead.
Chapter XIII
Unto the Peaks and Into the Feet
T he world was still dark to her and for that issuance of time she preferred it to remain as such. It was silent all about. Her ears still shrilly rang as a seashell would remind its listener of the oscillating ocean. Amyia’s fingers, without direct forethought from the mind, unfastened the buckle of the chinstrap, the release of pressure causing pain to run across the defile in her skin. She tugged the helm off and rubbed the raw, flayed skin with her hand, attempting to relieve the pain. Something wriggled underneath her back. It stopped. It squirmed again. Amyia’s eyes opened unto the world and a clear, surreal blue sky greeted her in return.
The day remained fairly young; the welkin above was devoid of all strands, strips and mists of cloud, and to the east the sun slowly sauntered over the horizon, granting an orange fringe to the perfect sky, ensuring that the sky itself knew that its majesty belonged to the radiant orb.
Amyia rolled onto her belly and found the ground beneath her to be plush and verdant, with an aromatic redolence that spoke of the glory of the intrepid field flowers. Twitching every limb in her body, Amyia arrived soundly at two conclusions: that all her limbs were still intact and quite functional, which she was quite pleased about, and that her location was still somewhere within the meadows. A groan brought the girl out of her assessment.
Palodar’s arm lay outstretched and newly liberated as Amyia had seen to its freedom. With his face still firmly entrenched within his helmet, and observing the particulars of the earth before his nose, the dwarf uttered a grass-beclouded muttering: “Amyia, you would make a finer tailor than I – your skill with the pins and the needles is unsurpassed.” And with his words his Amyia-squished arm bobbed up and down emphatically. Amyia’s laugh rang out like a clarion watching the unmoving and recumbent dwarf flail his one limb, reminding her very much of a chicken that had stumbled in such an attempt to scramble for its food. A series of events then followed that were very much like Amyia’s waking, which too included the removal of a helm, a grand grumble, the vigorous rubbing of a chin and the resolution to move from a prone state to one that was sedentary.
Palodar sat, much as a lump would, observing the landscape before him. The gently undulating hills roamed off into the distance and at some distant point melded together with the sky. “We have certainly travelled a fair way,” commented Palodar, continuing to scan the horizon before him for any significant landmark.
Amyia nodded absently and went about frantically searching the knapsack that s
till clung to the dwarf’s back. Her hands rummaged furiously through the wares, which there were much less of, brushing aside a remaining waterskin, two pouches of victuals and a bedroll. The golden lettering of her storybook peaked through the darkness enclosed within the bag and the girl dropped from her upright kneeling position to sit upon her calves with a splash of tranquillity. She gazed upwards and then at the meadow, constantly sweeping from one to the other, her eyes sparkling from the dawn’s rays and a masterfully concealed collection of moisture. “I wonder where Cezzum and Tac’quin are. I hope they are alright.”
A hand softly clasped the bridge between her shoulder and neck. “If we survived the storm, I am sure our dragon friend, who seems quite flighty as you know, would have seen to it that they both emerged alive. But aye, my young bairn, I hope they are well; if Tac’quin were here, there would be a smile from fang to fang” – Amyia grinned at the words as she consciously recalled her prior sentence and found no mixed plurals, while Palodar tallied it as a wonder that he must inform his green brother of – “Now first things first, let us see if we can find out where we are so we can decide what to do.”
Palodar patted Amyia’s shoulder lightly and turned to face the vista behind him. Amyia suddenly found her helmet being thrust back over her brow and her vision reduced to a mere slit once again. She struggled to push it off, but it was to no avail for the podgy hand forced it staunchly downwards. Turning her head, she looked at Palodar. His eyes were wide and never had she seen such white in them before. The dwarf’s face then disappeared behind his own helmet and tentatively Palodar removed his hand. Amyia turned her gaze. And there, looming over their backs, were the Forlorn Mountains, no more than a few hours walk away. Its structures, woven from a single base and resembling a handful of fingers as the pinnacles reached up into the firmament until their height tapered into crowns of teeth that, from the two companions’ distance, appeared to be as fine as the points of needles; branching from those spires a thousand more barb-like features jutted outwards. Black, fluid figures flitted between the Mountains’ spires as if they were vultures circling prey. Creatures that were to be seen from such a distance meant they were far larger than any bird was prone to be.
Amyia stood and regarded the mountain; to stand at its very threshold threw a shadowy light onto their perspective. “It looks like a mountain but…” she said, searching her mind for the word all the while she stared unceasingly at the isolated massif, “...twisted to make it look evil.”
The ashen mountains stood in stark contrast to the azure backdrop that embraced it, neither snow nor vegetation gracing the slopes of the earthen protuberance, and so sharp did it rise from the land that to surmount such a stolid behemoth would bring the most intrepid of mountaineers to their doom.
Palodar too rose. “It is the signs of the wyverns. It was how the great hunters of old, when races still carved the land, foretold where the nests of the sinister creatures were created.” With a gesture of his hand Palodar pointed to the peaks and continued, “Wyverns prefer to kill through impaling. Acid courses through their veins; they wither and mould mountains until great spikes have been wrought where prey, from anything as small as a sheep to as great as a dragon, may be thrust upon; you see wyverns may bring death as quickly as any dragon or fiend with a blade, but if they have the option, they will paralyse their foe, return to their nest and stick the victim upon one of their spears, lapping at the blood that swarms from the body onto the stone.”
Amyia did not flinch, she only continued to fix her look at the distant dots weaving and buzzing around the various spires. Her resolve remained prodigious. Amyia snickered and took a step forwards, and turning her head over her shoulder, she said to Palodar: “For Cezzum.”
Palodar marched onwards, and with an unusually sober face, he echoed her words: “For Cezzum.” And the dwarf fell in a step behind the girl. Palodar never heard the muttering that fell beneath Amyia’s breath as she added, “and for Mum.”
The pain throbbed violently in Cezzum’s head. It felt as if a behemoth had taken an entire tree’s bole and broken it upon his crown. He slowly, clumsily opened his eyes, each wink sending a flurry of aching pain into his head. Dappled light began to grow in front of his vision. At last the soft pastel colours of the forest became recognised. A hundred hazy and constantly shifting hues wafted above him. Cezzum stared up at the canopy of leaves gently rustling in the light morning breeze. It seemed odd how the apex of the trees was so close. If Cezzum was to stand he was sure he would be able to touch the autumnal foliage. It then occurred to the goblin, like a sudden spark of genius would hit an inventor, that he was in fact dangling high up from the ground below. Observing his body, he found himself lodged in a forking branch, one arm thrown over each prong, as well as one of his legs; his second walking appendage drooped freely below him. With the fright of falling nudging him, Cezzum quickly scampered out of the fork and clutched the main branch, digging his nails into the bark, oddly he felt quite at home climbing a tree, apart from the shooting pain that shook his core. When it began to abate, he saw the small rippled remnants of dried blood where his head had rested a few moments prior. His thought of being clobbered by a giant being did not seem as farfetched as he had first believed.
A breath of strong wind washed over Cezzum’s face, only serving to bolster the dull throb pounding within his eyes. Tac’quin’s landing was announced with a cracking of bark as it dug its talons deeply into the tree’s trunk; so entrenched were its talons that the dragon merrily rested vertically attached to the tree. Cezzum, attempting to move past the pinioning fetters of his headache, recalled the ordeal of their night.
“My thanks,” said Cezzum to Tac’quin, “for your immeasurable aid last eve.”
Tac’quin nodded its pleasure and then with a thrust of its maw indicated to the weapon at the goblin’s side. “A remarkable weapon you have there, you should be the one to be thanked, Cezzum. Without it neither of us would still fill our lungs.”
Cezzum had forgotten about his blade in the cacophony of the raging magic. He looked to his scabbard and there it was, the blade that had leapt from its binding to save the party from the magician and then, in the most tempestuous of weather, had found its way back to its master.
“Filburn, I think, knew far more of what was to come than he let on,” suggested Cezzum, fingering the hilt of the blade. He looked up again and asked in a voice tinged with sadness: “Have you seen Palodar or Amyia?”
“I searched the land below; they were not to be found. But there is something more worrying,” answered Tac’quin.
Cezzum’s brow furrowed.
Tac’quin’s wings lazily shifted up and down. “We are leagues from the Mountains. That ill-begotten storm threw us far to the north and west.”
The goblin became tense. “Too little time there is. We know not when the Osi’s forces will strike forth; we can ill avoid to tarry. And then what of dear Palodar and Amyia, again we know not where they are or their fate. Karig!” cried Cezzum, throwing out a Kig’n pejorative.
“Cool your mind goblin, we are not lost,” comforted Tac’quin in gentle tones never before heard by Cezzum. “Their fate should be no different to our own. If all is just and fair those two souls have been settled near Darantur and will escape the malevolence that lies ahead; I think it fitting for them Cezzum; they were not born of war, and death, and sorrow. I erred when I drove the girl on this path. She has a fire within her, that I do not doubt, but what avail is such a flame if it be smote before it may rage? You and I, goblin, are born in the crucible of enmity.” Tac’quin drove its claws further into the wood so as to secure itself before continuing its expostulation. “You, a goblin, born to kill, had found peace and solace - awe enough for that deed I cannot express, but within you resides the essence to survive the rigours of what we once extolled. Dragons choose peace and coexistence, yet it was not always so. Years did we battle man, beast and foe until death had warped us; we knew not who we were. It wa
s only then that we could glimpse our own malign reality and sought to change it. Despite our change, forever shall there remain the core of our own beings that knows the wails of death, their creation and their dismissal. We must do what we must goblin, or this world will fall to a fate that it is ill prepared for. I am fain that Amyia and Palodar might elude what is to come.”
A tear coalesced in Cezzum’s eye. The words flowed into every pore of his being, his mind imbibing the intoxication of such honest words. He had long pondered his choices: of culpably permitting the girl and dwarf to join him on his quest. Never did Cezzum think that the quest was not fraught with danger and death, but somehow there always remained a hope that they might fulfil his vow... their shared vow to Filburn with their lives intact. The fanciful nature of those thoughts now rushed to the surface and it was due to the love he held for both Palodar and Amyia that regret knifed at him. Cezzum had come to believe that no correct path existed, but consequence always remains a grim task to grapple with. And so too did he hope that Amyia and Palodar were nestled safely under the bower of some grand oak and that he might see them again one day. The dragon’s words were spoken from sincerity and Cezzum realised that no cunning was woven within them; Tac’quin bore as much amity for their two friends as the goblin did.
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