“How did the trolls get into the city so easily?” Jev asked as they strode down the wide hallway.
“A magical fog descended on the countryside this morning, letting them sneak their ships in from the sea,” Lornysh said. “They also had troops march down from the mountains on foot last night, so they could attack from both sides.”
“From the mountains? Do you know if they attacked zyndar lands on the way?” Jev had to find Targyon before he could check on his family, but fresh worry churned in his gut.
“I don’t. I heard that the watchmen that guard your borders and report intruders were killed a couple of days ago and that nobody learned about it in time to give advance warning.”
Lornysh rushed ahead, springing into a skirmish at the base of the large staircase that led up to Targyon’s office and suite, along with the library and all the guest rooms.
Rhi rushed past Jev to help with her bo. Jev spotted two trolls running in from a side hallway, blood dripping from short swords. Since they were open targets with nobody in the way, Jev fired at them. He struck one in the chest, but the other hurled a throwing knife at him.
Jev jumped for cover behind a marble bust on a pedestal.
The blade cracked against it, leaving blood spattered on the fine white stone. Jev fired again. The troll tried to dodge, but he wasn’t faster than a bullet. It struck him in the shoulder, and he spun around, grasping it. The troll started to run back the way he had come, but Jev fired again.
After seeing the faces of dead people that he knew, Jev felt no mercy. These trolls were invading his kingdom and his king’s castle. For that, they would die.
Across from him and tucked behind another bust, Hydal fired into the opposite hallway. A troll Jev hadn’t even seen staggered as a bullet took him in the chest.
“Clear,” Lornysh called from halfway up the stairs, a dead troll at his feet.
The butt of Rhi’s bo pinned another troll to the stairs just below him. Lornysh, his eyes like chips of blue ice, leaned down and drove his sword into the troll’s chest.
“We have no need of prisoners,” Lornysh told Rhi when she jerked back in surprise.
“It’s not like I was going to offer him a cell in your non-existent tower,” Rhi muttered, but Lornysh was already charging the rest of the way up the stairs.
Jev and Hydal joined her, and Hydal touched her back. “You’re doing fine,” he said, giving her a quick smile.
“Of course I am.” Rhi sniffed and thumped her bo on the stairs. “And thanks.”
“Stay close,” Jev told them. “Watch for attacks from the sides and our backs.”
At the top of the stairs, Lornysh paused as a coughing fit took him.
“Does that qualify as an attack?” Rhi asked. “Or is it just an elf with a hairball?”
An acrid stench stung Jev’s nose as he reached the landing. A dark gray cloud of smoke hung in the air farther down the hall, in the direction of Targyon’s suites rather than the library. It smelled like something left to burn on a grill. At first, he thought it had to be scorched troll flesh—or human flesh if someone else was hurling fireballs—but he shook his head. It smelled more like burning vegetable matter than meat.
“What is that?” Lornysh rasped, standing up and dashing tears from his eyes.
His nose was more sensitive than a human’s, so Jev wasn’t surprised that it affected him more, but he figured he would be crying soon too if they went closer to that dark cloud.
“I don’t know since the kitchens are downstairs,” Jev said. “I—” He halted when enemies burst out of the smoke hazing the hall ahead.
Trolls. Almost a dozen of them.
They ran at Jev’s group, and Lornysh sprang out to meet them, his fiery blade raised. Jev and Hydal shifted to either side of him so they had a clear firing line.
Jev only got off one shot before the trolls reached them. Lornysh sliced into two of them with his blazing elven speed, but the others reached the group. They almost barreled through the group. Rhi cracked one troll on the head, but he didn’t slow. None of them did unless Lornysh’s sword was in the way. Maybe because tears streamed from their eyes, and snot ran from their noses.
Jev fired at two more, bullets lodging in their torsos, but the trolls pushed through and ran down the steps. They stumbled and left blood behind, but they ran all the way toward the entrance of the castle.
“Someone must have made smoke grenades,” Jev said, his own eyes burning too. He blinked away moisture, sheathed his sword, tugged his shirt up over his nose and mouth, and advanced with only the pistol in hand. He doubted the clothing would do much to repel the smoke, but there wasn’t time to create a bandana.
“Trolls have noses even more sensitive than elven noses,” Lornysh rasped, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Targyon’s office door is open,” Hydal said, pointing into the smoke.
Despite his teary eyes, Lornysh led the way, racing down the hall.
Jev followed, but the awful smoke grew denser, stinging his eyes and coating his throat like acid. He tried to hold his breath.
More trolls staggered into view, some coming out of Targyon’s office. Jev and Hydal fired, each taking one down, but as with the other group, the invaders raced past without fighting. One troll’s eyes were so full of tears that he ran into a statue on the side of the hallway. Surprisingly, he didn’t recover. He grasped his throat with both hands and pitched to the floor, choking and twitching.
Lornysh ignored the troll and rushed through the open office door—a door that had been knocked off its hinges with the jamb reduced to splinters. Fallen castle guards lay dead all around the threshold, as if they had been making a stand. Protecting their king?
Jev dashed tears from his eyes and jumped over them, afraid he would find Targyon dead in the inner office.
Before he’d taken more than three steps, a small ceramic vase flew out of that inner office. It landed on the floor, shards flying and liquid and smoke spewing out. By the founders, not more of the stuff. Half a dozen trolls lay unmoving about the room. Judging by massive holes in the glass windows, a couple of others had escaped that way.
“Targyon?” Jev croaked, the name barely coming out as his throat spasmed. “Is that shit poisonous?”
“In here,” Targyon called from the inner office. His voice was strangely muffled, but Jev recognized it.
He ran past the broken vase and through the door. When he spotted Targyon standing with no trolls around him, Jev dropped to his knees in relief. His lungs burning and his stomach—
With an abruptness that surprised him, it decided to eject its contents. He pitched forward and vomited all over the rug in front of Targyon’s desk. As he retched, he was aware of someone closing the door behind him, but his eyes were too busy streaming tears for him to see anything.
“Open the windows, Gray,” Targyon said.
Windows. Yes, the windows were a good idea. Jev tried to stand up to rush over to them, to gasp in fresh air, but his muscles trembled, and all he could manage was a crawl. Targyon’s assistant, Gray, pushed open a window, and a blessed sea breeze wafted into the office.
“For future reference, Jev,” Targyon said, “that’s not an acceptable way to present yourself to your monarch.”
Jev thrust the top half of his body out the window, gasping in the fresh air of the courtyard.
“What is that odious smoke?” Lornysh almost sounded normal. Maybe elves recovered more quickly than humans.
Jev listened, but he didn’t think he could talk yet.
“I read that trolls are terribly allergic to all manner of our local chili peppers and that they can, if ingested, cause an anaphylactic response in them. I took a guess that inhaling enough of the particles might have the same effect.” Targyon waved to numerous books open on his desk. “I also found a recipe for a biological agent that affects the mucous membranes of most vertebrates. I sneaked down to the kitchens through one of the hidden passages, retrieved the ingredients, and decided
to mix the two together for maximum effect.”
Jev finally got enough air to turn from the window, and he noticed that Targyon and his secretary wore homemade face masks.
“Did your guards know you were wandering through the castle using secret passages, Sire?” Hydal asked, managing to sound stern and disapproving even with snot dangling to his chest.
“No, they told me to stay in my rooms and let them handle the trolls. But I could tell from the screams—human screams—that they were being overwhelmed.” Targyon shook his head grimly.
Jev decided not to mention all the bodies they had passed on the way in. If Targyon didn’t know yet that so many of his people had died defending him, Jev didn’t want to be the one to break the news.
“We got the dragon, Sire,” he said. “Zenia is riding her around the city, and she’s already incinerating people with her breath.”
“Zenia is? Or is the dragon a she?”
“It’s a girl dragon. Zenia’s breath is minty.”
“Good to know.”
“I’m hoping the dragon will turn the tides, Sire,” Jev said. “That the trolls will see her and flee. Before or after she flambés their blue butts.”
“I’ll hope for that too. In the meantime, who wants to help me make more of my concoction?” He waved to a fireplace with a lidded cauldron hanging over the flames. “Gray can make some more masks.”
This wasn’t the way Jev had imagined going into battle with the trolls, but he spotted two running through the courtyard below, chasing a zyndari woman in skirts, and held out his hand for one of the little ceramic pots lined up on Targyon’s desk. Trolls invading his kingdom and harassing Targyon’s loyal subjects deserved death by any means available.
19
The dragon flapped her majestic wings, carrying Zenia toward the harbor, but as they flew away from the castle, she spotted what looked like a company of soldiers riding on the highway toward the city. Men coming to help. They wore familiar colors, and a rangy man in the front gripped a flag bearing the Dharrow emblem. Old Heber Dharrow rode next to the flag bearer.
Zenia wouldn’t have given the company a second glance, but equal numbers of trolls stood just outside of the city walls, waiting to head them off. And as she watched, more trolls ran out of the mangroves to one side of the highway. A lot more. Ogres and a few orcs loped along with the troop, and she even spotted a two-legged wyvern flying over their heads. It seemed the trolls had amassed all of their allies for this invasion.
“But not enough,” Zenia said with determination. She touched the dragon’s scales and envisioned them swooping down to clear the path for Heber’s men.
The dragon emanated pleasure and banked to head in that direction. Zenia didn’t know if her scaled friend enjoyed flying into battle or was simply enjoying her freedom after so many months in that cave, but it hardly mattered, so long as she wanted to drive these trolls out of the city.
The dragon swooped low, opening her maw and spraying flames at the trolls on the road. They ran in a dozen directions as her shadow fell over them, but she was so fast and agile in the air that they had no chance to escape. Zenia was merely a spectator, holding on tight as the dragon flew back and forth, flinging flames. She wished she could do more, but her new ally hardly needed the help of a mundane human.
The wyvern flew toward them, talons extending to attack, but it was much smaller than the dragon. The creature seemed to realize that, because at the last second, it veered to the side. Too intimidated to attack?
The dragon followed it and hurled a blast of mental magic. The power slammed into the wyvern’s backside, hurling the creature over the mangroves and all the way to the Jade River. The dragon peered around and flung more of her magic, knocking aside any foes still standing. When no trolls remained in sight, a twinge of disappointment flowed through her link to Zenia.
“There are plenty more at the harbor, girl.” Zenia patted her scales.
Glee emanated from the dragon at the reminder of the enemy ships there. As she flew higher, Zenia saw Heber Dharrow and his mounted troops, all standing slack-jawed as they gaped at the charred carnage the dragon was leaving behind.
Zenia didn’t do anything so cheeky as wave, but she felt a surge of satisfaction when she met Heber’s eyes briefly. She had given up on changing his mind and convincing him she would make a good daughter-in-law. She would settle for having him know he was indebted to her. Or at least to her new dragon friend.
They flew over the city, occasionally dipping low to blow flames onto squadrons of trolls in the streets, and soon reached the harbor. The dragon swooped and dove, setting fire to the enemy ships and causing the waiting crews to flee, diving over the railings and into the water by the dozens.
Zenia was amazed at how much fire the dragon could produce and how much raw power she had to hurl at the troll shamans who stepped up to oppose her. She couldn’t imagine what life had been like back when there had been more dragons active in the world, or when the founders themselves had flown through the skies.
When all the troll ships were nothing but charred wreckage and smoke, the dragon shared the sense of a question with Zenia. What next? she seemed to ask.
“Back to the castle.” Worried about Jev, Targyon, and the others, Zenia envisioned Alderoth Castle again.
The dragon swept inland with her powerful wingbeats. Zenia glimpsed the Water Order Temple for the first time that day. It was strange seeing it from the sky, and she was relieved the stone structure didn’t appear to have been damaged yet.
Mages and monks in blue robes fought in the street, defending the temple from trolls. A few glanced up as Zenia and her scaled mount flew past, and they didn’t seem to know whether to be terrified or relieved at the sight of a dragon. They prayed to the Blue Dragon founder, but that wasn’t the same as seeing a living dragon flapping her wings overhead.
Since they seemed to be defending themselves adequately, Zenia didn’t encourage the dragon to stop. She had her sights on the castle, until she spotted a knot of white-haired people in a park, their backs to a fountain. One woman waved an old musket about, but most of them appeared weaponless.
“We have to help them,” she whispered, envisioning the dragon swooping in to the rescue.
As she was learning, the dragon was always happy to swoop anywhere. It didn’t seem to matter if a goal lay ahead of them. The dragon wheeled in the sky, taking a flamboyant route down to the park.
Zenia’s stomach protested the crazy gyrations, and more than once, she was reminded of her seasickness on the steamer, but the fresh air blasting her face helped calm her stomach.
For the first time, the dragon roared as she came in for a landing. The trolls, standing with their weapons raised, had been about to smash into the elders. They leaped away at the tremendous roar, more than one tripping over his own feet and falling to the ground.
The dragon sent flames after all those who weren’t fast enough to sprint away.
The white-haired elders in front of the fountain clutched each other and backed away as much as they could. Most of them had white eyes to match their hair, and Zenia recognized two of the blind seers that Jev had donated coins to in the time she’d known him.
“Give me a moment, please,” Zenia whispered, sharing a mental image to convey the dragon waiting.
She feared their arrival had scared the blind seers and that they might not know what was happening, so she slid off the dragon to approach them.
“Is everyone all right? The trolls are gone.”
One of the seers wasn’t hunkered back with the others. A woman with long blonde-gray hair stepped forward, her arms spreading. She didn’t appear as old as the others, but her eyes were still milky white.
“Zenia Cham,” she said. “I knew you would come.”
Zenia had only been a couple of steps away, but she faltered, uncertain. How had the woman known her name? Could she have recognized Zenia simply from her voice? But Zenia didn’t speak with any
of the city’s blind seers regularly—or ever. Unlike Jev, she didn’t believe in the fortunes they purported to share, and on the occasions when she’d left a coin in one of their tins, she hadn’t said anything.
“Yes,” Zenia said slowly. “And who are you?”
“Marity Moonhavor.” The lady curtsied. “But you don’t likely remember me. I was a friend of your mother’s when we both worked at the cotton mill on the edge of town. I saw you a few times when you were a toddler, but I went out to work on the Tyrnok family farms for several years, and it was far enough away that we lost touch.”
“Oh.” Zenia glanced back at the dragon. Under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed hearing from someone who had known her mother, but the sounds of fighting in the streets continued, so she didn’t want to stand here for long.
“I didn’t learn that she was sick until after she passed, I’m afraid,” Marity went on. “She sent a letter, but it was winter, as I’m sure you remember, and the envelope didn’t arrive for weeks. She asked me to keep an eye on you if it was at all possible. I’m just a commoner, the same as she was, so I didn’t have money and couldn’t offer to take you in—I was a tenant, bound to work for the Tyrnoks for several more years—but I did look you up after her passing. I was relieved that the Water Order Temple took you in.”
“Yes, I did all right for myself.” Zenia took a step back toward the dragon.
The other seers had loosened their grips on each other and now faced Zenia and the dragon, their faces curious.
“Is this the one you had me write letters to?” one aged man whispered to Marity, the only one there with normal brown eyes that seemed to have no trouble seeing.
Zenia paused. Write letters to?
Marity smiled. “Yes. You see, Zenia, I’ve always been close to the founders. They’ve sent me numerous visions over the years. But it wasn’t until after I lost my sight that those visions grew particularly vivid and accurate. Before, my visions were as likely to lead me astray as not, but these days…” She nodded solemnly. “I am glad you returned from the jungles of Izstara. I regret that you lost one of your party, but I’m relieved for your mother’s sake—and yours—that it wasn’t you.”
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