“You will not have to. The draconus are doing rather well for us in the meantime, though our own losses have been higher than we thought. If you and your people value your lives, then best to keep yourselves aligned with Kesh, always. Do you understand?”
“Understood, Kesh. Now tell me who your targets are.”
“My colleague in Tannis has informed me that the prefect’s daughter is being held sedated at the Temple of Astor there. The chief patriarch of the order there is most likely protecting her, so you will have to subvert him, and then it will be a simple matter to pick the others off one by one, should they come too close to discovering our secret.”
“Why a prefect’s daughter?” Jezebel asked. “She seems entirely too minor for your machinations.”
“Minor, yes,” Rualf responded. “But even a pawn has the potential to become a queen at the endgame. It is better for us if she does not bridge the gap between the nobles and the order. We have worked too hard to put a wedge between the two, and now the timing would be most unfortunate if she were to reunite them in a common cause against us.”
“Clearly, Mage, but why hasn’t your colleague taken care of things long ago? Better to have had this matter dealt with, than to continue stamping out so many small fires.”
“Ketas would have, but I am sure there have been unwarranted developments that have altered our plans.”
“Pray your plans don’t become more altered than they already are, Mage.” Jezebel turned and walked out of the room, not bothering to wait for a reply. The door slammed shut, leaving Rualf alone again.
“It is much too late for that, my Balarian assassin, too late indeed.”
Chapter 11
Tannis
The night was finally at its darkest. The twin daughter moons of Agon, Tira and Sara, finally set far to the west, and there would be a couple of hours till dawn. Certainly the intense band of stars twinkled and gleamed above, as if a rich princess had fallen and spilled her jewels across the dark black sky, but their gleaming pricks of light did little to illuminate the large black shape of Qui Amatha as she flew high above the ground, silently gliding on the warm air breezes of a midsummer’s night.
The twinkling lights of Tannis shone far beneath her, despite most of the populace being blissfully and ignorantly asleep. She knew the habits of man, and she knew they were least prepared in the intense dark just before dawn. That, ironically, was the period of time when the great black dragon was at her peak of power. She could feel the rays of charged particles raining down upon her from high above the atmosphere, and the energy felt rejuvenating and invigorating. She would be at her peak, just now, in this moment.
A slight dip of her wings and her smooth glide now became a controlled dive. The birds in the area disappeared, and she ruled the sky, supreme in her power. She found herself completely unchallenged, as her speed accelerated and the ground started to grow larger beneath her.
Tannis did not have a castle keep nor tower. The town was sprawled beneath her, many villas dotting the countryside around the town center, where many large stone and wooden buildings stood clumped together. Experience over the eons had taught Qui Amatha that there would always be a watch. Usually it was a tall tower, but if not that, then some central place to rouse the inhabitants in times of crisis or danger.
Using her infrared vision, she quickly spotted the two bright red humans standing on a cooler blue-colored rickety tower made from wood. They were facing one another, neither of them looking in the air above them. With a fatal swoop she picked both up in her rear claws and climbed over the eastern edge of the town, allowing her momentum to carry her back up, and when she reached her apex she released the two dead humans, allowing them to fall lifelessly back to earth.
Qui Amatha turned as she released them and swept lower again, returning to the point where she had snatched the humans from their precarious wooden tower. The tower was now leaning over the street below, having been inadvertently knocked over from her initial attack. There were a couple more figures that had exited the building below the tower and looked up. Qui Amatha flapped her wings violently to slow her descent and used her long rear talons to land on the edge of the building. She breathed then, feeling the liquid from her secondary stomach pouch as it poured out and landed with a sizzle on the figures below.
The screams of pain and agony sounded so blissful to the black drake. They didn’t last long, unfortunately, as her dark black acid ate away at both flesh and bone. Clothes ignited under the black liquid, and flames began to appear on the buildings where her foul retching had touched the flammable wood. What her breath would not dissolve it would ignite.
Then came the excitement she craved—the alarm was given. People started to scurry from buildings, looking around at what could have caused such uproar at so ungodly an hour of the night. The entire area started to illuminate from a half-dozen fires that had quickly sprouted up on either side of the main road.
Several of the humans were still unaware of her presence as they looked first up the street one way and then down the street the other way. Qui Amatha could not control herself; she let loose a roar right above the growing crowd below her and then looked down at her handiwork. The humans looked up and started to scream in return, but their screams were like the screams of rodents caught in a trap, weak and high-pitched. Qui Amatha took aim and let loose another long stream of black ooze from her gaping maw, turning her head to ensure the corrosive liquid was spread for maximum effect.
Finally an arrow clanked off of her side scales to her right. There, across the street and on top of one of the fewer tall buildings, she saw the archer with his bow as he knocked again, ready to loose on the great black drake.
Qui Amatha did not hesitate as the screams of pain and agony filled the street, and then they were quickly silenced, leaving only the yells of fear to take their places. She flapped her wings and literally jumped across the street, and in three quick strokes she reached the other building.
No, she wasn’t about to waste her precious fluid on a lone archer. She used her talons to grasp at the man, but he ducked and took cover under a crenellated arch made of wood but buttressed with stone. Qui Amatha, however, was no young drake just hatched from her egg. She flew to the side, and with a powerful whip of her long tail, she hit the entire top of the building solidly, and felt the stone supports give way as large timbers cracked.
She flew and turned to look back upon the scene, and saw the building collapse, the man disappearing as he fell with the rubble and was obscured within a cloud of dust. Qui Amatha had arisen.
Julian awoke with a start. His servants screamed, and he finally heard the bang of the secondary alarms. Smaller gongs, in and around town, were being banged to indicate that they were under attack. Julian was an older man, and he could not remember them sounding before, other than during ceremonies to welcome dignitaries, and he was sure there would be no dignitaries arriving in Tannis at this time of night.
He met up with Tybert, his chief of staff, just outside of the front gate to his villa, where they stood looking towards town. A red glow started to silhouette the top of the town’s buildings, which were visible from a half-mile away. Several of his guards who kept watch on the villa arrived as well, and they all stood in awe, facing the town center.
“Sire, you may want to retreat to the house until we have this all sorted out,” Tybert said, grabbing Julian by his arm.
“No! We must get to the temple and find my daughter!” Julian exclaimed, starting to run towards the town center.
Just then there was a large crash of falling masonry, and several of his servants started to scream. They all looked back inside the main gates and saw what looked like a winged beast with a long tail and a stinger or claw attached to the end of it. It had dagger-sharp teeth, and its claws raked the ground where it stood. It appeared to have just torn down a section of the villa’s walls as it stood amidst the dusty rubble.
The beast looked directly at Jul
ian, and he swore it grinned at him as a long, slender line of drool escaped its mouth and hit the ground below. At that exact moment the creature took flight, jumping into the air. Flapping its large wings, it disappeared into the night.
“What in the name of Agon was that?” one of the guards exclaimed, holding his sword in front of him in the gesture of warding, as was Ulathan custom.
He was never answered, as more screams ensued, and from the rubble of the destroyed villa wall came several creatures that looked like humans. One wore the colors and emblem of Ulatha, but his skull was half–caved in; the humanoid stumbled into the villa courtyard and hacked a servant down with its sword.
People ran as more and more of the humanoid creatures poured through the gap in the wall. Several were entering the domicile, but the rest, having seen Julian, pressed on towards them in a gruesome march of death.
Julian, his guards, and the surviving servants ran towards town.
Markus also heard the alarm, but he was already awake. He was in the inner sanctum, sitting on the same cold slab of marble that Olivia had laid on earlier that day. He had ordered the servants out of the temple proper, and had restricted them to the housing section of the temple itself until further notice.
He had no idea how he was going to appease the forces that he was dealing with. He was fairly certain that somehow the Kesh were working with Lady Gemma to expose the façade that the nobles had thrust upon the citizenry of Ulatha. How and why Gemma would work against her cousin he did not know. He could not understand completely, but if the rumors were true, then she held no great love for the duke and thought her own family of Vandersot should have been crowned decades ago, when her grandfather passed away and left the duchy’s crown to the Tors instead of her family.
By Agon how he hated politics, and now this. He had returned from his argument with the Lady Gemma’s spy, only to find the inner sanctum empty. He went immediately to Olivia’s alcove and found her belongings missing. No one spoke of the matter, and he instantly had his hand, Thomas, bar the gates to the sanctum and gave orders for her “rest” to not be disturbed.
The rabble outside was another problem altogether. Their newly found devotion to Olivia now bordered not only on the fanatical but also on the blasphemous. Astor was the deity here whom they were to worship, but the group that came from Kero Swamp seemed to miss that point as they waited for Olivia to awaken and . . . And what exactly? Markus thought to himself. What was it that they were expecting from the prefect’s daughter?
Her appointment was only a sham to appease the nobles, and he didn’t tell the Supreme Patriarch that he had initiated Olivia expecting her to “disappear” and he would close the matter. Markus was promised that Olivia would not be hurt and would instead be spirited away to the Eastern Realms, keeping her outside the influence of the Ulathan nobles.
He was betrayed.
No, they weren’t going to keep their word, and now it became clear that for some reason they wanted her dead. He knew not what secret they wanted kept, but she played some kind of role in that. He did the best he could now and his plan was to have kept her sedated until he could appease them and find a way out of this web of deceit. A way that did not involve his head set upon a spike outside of the town or, worse, at the entrance to the Grand Temple in Utandra.
Oh, Supreme Patriarch Torwell could be a gentle man, but conspiring to murder a member of the order, sham or not, was grounds for a divine cleansing of the highest level, which involved the bloodletting of the sinner to the point of death, followed by the sinner’s head being on display as a warning to any other potential blasphemer. No, Markus was very fond of his head and where it lay attached at the moment, but Olivia had not made things easy for him.
His network of spies in town included a servant at the prefect’s villa, and he had just received word earlier that night that she had not returned home. That also was most fortunate, because while Prefect Julian had not seen Olivia’s pendant, he had heard about it. If the prefect saw it, and recognized it as the same one that his wife wore and was buried with, then the prefect would accuse Markus and the order of being grave robbers, if not worse.
That was, of course, rubbish, but perceptions didn’t matter when it came to the location of one’s head. For his own head to remain on his shoulders, he had to make sure that there were no allegations involving the order and anything to do with the prefect’s late wife.
He could hear footsteps coming, and then a key was placed into the locked door. He didn’t need to turn around to know that his last remaining hand, Thomas, was approaching.
“Master!” Thomas said, breathing heavily. “The town is under attack.”
Markus turned around to face his disciple. “Do we know by whom?”
“Not yet. I sent one of the servants to town to inquire from the guard. He was accompanied by two of Commander Fulbert’s men.”
“Well, nothing to do, then, but wait,” Markus said, an air of distraction in his posture.
“Master, the people in the courtyard are asking for Hand Olivia. They seem more skittish with the town’s alarm being sounded than they were before, if you can believe that.”
“That I find hard to believe, considering how worked up they were when they returned from Kero with those tales of dead men walking. No matter—let’s go have a look see ourselves, shall we?”
Markus stood and walked out, allowing Thomas to lock the door to the inner sanctum behind him. They walked in silence to the front of the temple. The veranda double doors to the lobby and library were closed and locked at this time of night. Thomas opened the small one near Lily’s work desk, allowing the two men to exit the temple building and walk over to where several people were milling around in the dimmer lamplight of the courtyard, discussing the alarm, which had just gone silent.
“Good to finally see you, Patriarch Markus,” Fulbert said, turning to face the temple administrator. “I fear those creatures followed us to Tannis.”
“We discussed this when you returned, Commander. I’m sure there was a logical explanation for whatever attacked you and your group,” Markus said.
“I warned you and the prefect!” Fulbert said forcefully. “That is why we took sanctuary in your compound. The foul creatures were too many to count. Has Olivia recovered yet? Why have you not healed her?”
“The beast’s venom is strong, Commander,” Markus said, wiping a small bead of sweat from his brow with his hand. “We are doing all we can, but I fear for the worst.”
Just then there was a commotion at the front entrance. “Come quickly, my lords,” cried one of the commander’s men who was at the gate.
The men walked to the front, followed by several servants and a few of the commander’s guards, who had now armed themselves and flanked their commander as he walked.
“What is it?” Fulbert asked his man.
“There! The servant is returning alone,” his guard said, pointing west down the road towards town, where fires were now visible in the city center.
The servant was running as fast as he could go and apparently had lost one of his sandals, as he was barefoot on his right foot. “Run! Seal the gates!” the servant yelled, arriving and bending over to catch his breath.
“What is it, Edward?” Markus asked the man, recognizing him as one of the ground’s caretakers.
“Where are my men?” Commander Fulbert asked, concern in his voice.
“There is a foul beast in town. I did not see it, but many of the town’s people were running for their lives, and they were screaming that a dragon had come. We tried to help, but there is nothing but panic in Tannis.” The man stood upright, breathing heavily and taking a moment to catch his breath. “Lord Fulbert, your men ran into town to assist. I came back straight away to report as we had agreed. Please!” the man now said in fear. “Close and bar the gates before it’s too late!”
“Nonsense!” Markus said, stepping further out into the road and looking west towards town, which was cle
arly visible not too far from the temple itself. “Are you sure it’s not just a fire, Edward?”
“No, Master, I am telling you something screamed or roared, and it wasn’t human!” Edward said.
“That must have been what we heard earlier, Commander,” one of the guards said, motioning for his companions with his sword. Several of the troops took up a defensive ring around the entrance to the temple.
“Commander, I don’t think guarding the temple from outside would be wise,” Markus said, while he looked at the growing fires. “What do you think if we hold from inside the gates?”
“Most likely what your man heard was that beast that attacked Hand Olivia,” Fulbert said, also looking back at Tannis as it started to burn. “I fear that my men and I must head to town to defend it, beast or no, though I’d feel better if we had your hand to support us. Can your hand there help us?” he said, pointing to Thomas, who now appeared quite ashen and pale.
“No! Thomas is needed here, he is my last hand and—” Markus was interrupted by screams, yells, and shouts as several dozen people appeared on the road running towards the temple.
“Get them in quickly!” Commander Fulbert shouted.
Soon people were streaming towards the sanctuary of the temple, and Commander Fulbert’s men were ushering them inside the walled grounds, while Thomas and several other servants gave directions for the masses to shelter on the front veranda.
“Should we open the doors, Master?” Thomas shouted over the press and noise of people.
Markus thought for a moment; already there were close to five score of people, including servants and soldiers, milling about the front grounds of his temple. The people needed leadership, but Markus wasn’t sure opening the temple doors to a mass of hysterical people was wise at the moment.
Unfortunately for him, the matter was already decided. Not sure where they were running to, but wanting to get inside the building, the mass of crazed people from Tannis swarmed the front veranda double doors. There were three sets of them, and they had congregated at the middle set. With people in the rear pushing those in front, the doors gave way with a crash of glass and the cracking of wood, as they were pulled off their hinges. The doors were very decorative, and, while well built, they were not designed to withstand the pressure of a fear-crazed mob.
The Black Dragon: A Claire-Agon Dragon Book (Dragon Series 1) Page 13
