Swords of the Six (The Sword of the Dragon)

by Scott Appleton

  No one replied to him, but he placed his staff on the floor and stepped closer to Dantress, arms outstretched. “May I have my son now?”

  She lifted the child up, astonished to see three tears form and drip down his face. He had the look of a warrior, a man hardened by his experiences, but his sorrow seemed to outweigh all else.

  “You are,” she heard the words whisper from her mouth, though she had not intended them to, “Kesla.”

  Her sisters’ mouths opened, their eyes widened.

  The man stroked his son’s dark head and gazed upon him. “Almost a thousand years ago I was like you, my son. Innocent and good. But evil has a way of finding those it wants. It destroyed me and it will surely destroy you if you stay here.

  “Your father is a bad man,” he sobbed, wiped more tears from his eyes, but then smiled sadly as he looked at the infant. “My path is laid before me and I cannot turn from it, but, my son, you must not follow in my steps. You must learn goodness, justice. And you must hold to them.”

  He looked down at Dantress and held out the child. “With the blood of a witch and the blood of a traitor in his veins, he is more vulnerable than any other child I have fathered. There is only One whom I trust to watch over my last son; One who will teach him to love the Creator and pursue righteousness.

  “Take him, servant of the dragon. Take my son. Please! I beg of you. Do not let him fall as I have! Bring him to my old master, for this is all I have left to give in recompense for my wickedness.”

  The child he gently laid in Dantress’s arms.

  Her eyes filled with tears as she gazed into Kesla’s eyes. “Come with us! The dragon will forgive, I know he will! He did not send us to kill you, Kesla … he wants you restored.”

  She stepped toward him, but he suddenly picked up his staff and spun it around his torso. It thwacked into a figure to his left that Dantress had failed to notice: the witch!

  As if passing through air, the staff did not affect the woman.

  “Al’un Dai.” Kesla grasped the woman by her shoulder. “Do not harm them. Enough blood has been spilled by us. Let it end here.”

  The woman evaded him and snatched her son from Dantress’s arms. She retreated and pulled out a dagger. Holding this above the child’s dark haired head, she glared at the sisters. “Either you leave here—now—or I will slit my son’s throat! My blood runs in this child’s veins—a witch’s blood—and he will one day become the greatest wizard ever to walk the face of this world.

  “They have foreseen it!”

  Kesla raced to Al’un Dai’s side and smashed his fist into her right temple. She fell and he took his son from her. He cradled him in his arms. “You would kill our son? I dare you! Touch him again to harm him and I will knock your head off.”

  Darkness gathered to Al’un Dai. She screamed a horrible, piercing scream, then she dissolved into thin air, only to reform next to Kesla, her dagger poised above the child.

  Dantress froze. The fate of an innocent hung uncertainly before her, and she could not move. It was too awful, too cruel. This woman was prepared to slay her own son in order to save her life.

  A figure dashed from her left. Rose’el, with sword drawn and fixed in both hands, thrust out her rusted blade. It penetrated the witch’s bosom, right through the heart.

  As the blade’s point emerged from her back, Al’un Dai dropped the dagger. Her face contorted. Kesla, still holding his son in his right arm, caught her as she fell and tenderly set her on the floor.

  Rose’el’s blade remained in the witch’s body.

  “I loved you, Kesla,” the witch whispered. “I could have killed you when you came into my chambers, but I loved you. I gave you everlasting youth.”

  She spat blood and cried out in pain, her back arched against the sword still stuck through her body. “Revenge me, my love. Revenge me.” Her arm twitched and then she lay quiet.

  The baby started to cry. Kesla leaned over the dead woman, kissing her unresponsive lips and running his fingers through her golden curls.

  Ice formed on the floor around him. He stood and pushed his son into Dantress’s arms. “Promise me,” he pleaded. “Promise to deliver my son to the dragon.”

  “You are forgiven,” Dantress said, glancing at the child in her arms. “Come back with us.”

  “Dear child, I cannot …” Suddenly he lunged forward. He picked up the sword lying on the floor and retreated several strides.

  “Though this weapon has been diminished through my wickedness,” he said, eying it up and down, “it shall be purified. Oh, Xavion, Xavion, would that I could take back all that I’ve done and follow you in battle again. But you are dead and your sword is a mere shadow of its former glory.

  “Thus, as this sword has been tainted by the blood of the innocent, now it shall be purified by the blood of a traitor.”

  Kesla set the sword’s hilt on the floor so that the weapon stood vertical. His tears fell onto the rusted blade, mingling with the rust, and—what looked like—blood. “Tell the dragon”—he considered the blade pointed at his chest—“that my sins caught up with me and my doom was my own choosing. Tell him that my son must not become like his father, nor do I wish him to know of his mother. He is my illegitimate son, yet a son that I have loved as dearly as any other.”

  Running together, the sisters cried out for him to stop, but he fell upon the sword of Xavion. Its rusted blade pierced his heart and protruded from his back. His blood pooled rapidly around him. The sword glowed white for an instant and then it absorbed the blood of the traitor.

  Handing the infant to Evela, Dantress knelt next to the dead man, trembling as she pushed his body over and drew out Xavion’s sword. She held it aloft as she stood. Its blade narrowed and then lengthened several inches, as if it were a living thing.

  The sound of another blade slurping from its victim drew her attention to Rose’el, and she saw that her sister had taken back her sword from the witch’s body. Rose’el gazed upon the witch. She pulled a gold wrist band off the woman’s wrist. “For the boy,” she mouthed.

  A brass ring on Kesla’s finger sparkled in the light. Dantress reached over and pulled it off his finger, handing it to Rose’el. “You keep them for now.”

  Rose’el put the brass ring on her right thumb and slid the gold band onto her wrist.

  Thick ice formed over the floor surrounding the dead woman. Whispers filled the room, low cold whispers that filled Dantress with dread.

  “Evela, give me the baby!” She took the infant from Evela.

  Ice accumulated on the walls, sealing all openings, all avenues of escape.

  Caritha, Rose’el, Levena, and Laura touched their blades together, sending a blast of blue energy sizzling against the wall through which Dantress had entered the room. But the discharge had no effect.

  “Great,” Rose’el said, balling her hand into a fist. “Now what are we going to do?”

  Suddenly the wall trembled. The ice accumulating on it shattered. Something crashed into the wall on the opposite side. It shook, and several stones dislodged from the wall and fell to the floor. Another crushing blow struck the wall. This time the stones exploded at the sisters. They ducked, and the stones landed several feet from them. They saw that a hole, large enough for a horse to pass through, had been carved out of the wall.

  “Come on!” Caritha ran through it, Dantress and the others fast on her heels.

  THE PORTAL OPENS

  The sisters raced into the corridor and found the stairway that they had come down when they’d entered the M temple’s lower levels. Ghostly whispers filled the dark corners, and hisses followed them. Dantress held Xavion’s sword ahead of her, its glow had intensified so that now it blazed like a torch in the darkness. Her sisters sheathed their swords, for the light produced by their weapons was inconsequential beside that of hers.

  When they emerged into daylight they ran. Hissing and whispering continued to sound behind them until they crossed over the drawbridge.
Exhausted, they sat on the ground, panting for breath and sore from their battle with the witch.

  Dantress kissed the infant’s forehead. She couldn’t get Kesla’s face out of her mind. He had seemed so gentle. Not at all what she’d pictured for someone who’d helped murder a young man.

  An eagle shot over their heads and screeched. Their eyes followed the golden-eyed creature as it angled back its brown wings and landed on the end of a rustic canoe. It fluffed the pure white feathers bedecking its head and neck and looked up at the old woman from the cottage standing in the canoe.

  “Eh! What’s this?” their former hostess asked.

  The sisters were startled, for the canoe was resting on dry land.

  Dantress blinked. “What … how did you get here?”

  The old woman raised her arm, pointing to the south. “Now’s not the time, Dearies. No, no time to rest. See? Another evil rises from the south. He has sensed your presence, knows you are weary from battle and seeks vengeance for his slain dragons.”

  Faint orange colorations marched across the early evening sky. Darkness threaded its way over the landscape. The battered temple fortress rose gloomy and menacing, as if blaming Albino’s daughters for the corpses lying unburied in its ancient chambers.

  A flash of light caught Dantress’s eye. A greenish, unnatural thunderbolt shot from right to left, behind Al’un Dai’s broken towers.

  A wailing wind blew from the south ahead of the storm.

  She stood up, her arms still embracing Kesla’s infant as she turned to the old woman. “Will you help us?”

  “Help? Eh, with what, dear?”

  “Sit back down, Dantress.” Laura stretched out her arms and yawned. “Take a break.”

  Rose’el grunted and looked up at Dantress, shaking her head. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” she said to the other sisters, “but I’ve come to believe that we should trust Dantress to judge the situation. She seems to have a bit more dragon sense in her than the rest of us. Besides”—she pointed south—“I don’t like the looks of that.”

  Caritha nodded. Her chest heaved as she breathed in deep and slow. “It isn’t safe here. Is it, Dantress?”

  Turning back to the odd old woman standing in a canoe on dry ground, Dantress held out the sleeping child. “He would slow us down,” she said, gazing fondly upon the tiny being. “We cannot bring him with us.”

  “Then I will bring him to my home.” The old woman took the boy. “He will be safe with me.”

  “No.” Dantress stared hard into her eyes. “The child must be delivered to my father … it was his father’s final wish.” She hesitated, picturing the place along the sea’s shore where she and her sisters had come through the gate and first seen the golden banks of the Eiderveis River.

  The old woman’s gray eyes returned her gaze. “Very well,” she said. “What is your wish, Dantress?”

  With such clarity did the woman speak, that, at first, Dant-ress believed she’d imagined it. The hunched woman before her, with dirt encrusted skirt and pale green blouse had thus far spoken with total lack of sophistication. Now, at a time when Dantress most needed her services, the old woman had spoken with dignity, respect.

  Behind her, Caritha, Rose’el, Laura, Levena, and Evela rose to their feet. They were prepared to follow her lead.

  “Go quickly,” Dantress said to the old woman, reaching down to part the fold in her skirt. The sword’s rusted metal protested as she drew it out. The ringing of metal behind her told her that her sisters had followed suite. “Take the child to the shores of the north sea. Bring him there, within sight of the Eiderveis River, and wait for us.”

  “It will be done as you ask.” The old woman bowed, then sat in the canoe. Her eagle flapped its wings, shrieking. “Go! Eh?” She held the baby in her arm and pointed with her free hand to the forest. “Go now! Flee while ye can and don’t look back. And I will bring the boy.”

  Dantress couldn’t help frowning. Was it wise? Leaving an old woman with a baby, in a canoe, sitting out in the middle of nowhere, waiting for who knew what?

  Green lightning flashed. A dragon roar echoed from the south. Carried by the wind, it resounded against the ruins and echoed in the surrounding forest.

  “Are you sure you want us to leave you here?” She leaned forward, her hand gently resting on the old woman’s bony shoulder.

  “Yes! Yes, go now … There is no time. He is coming.”

  “Who is coming?”

  The old woman slapped her hard across the face.

  Dantress stepped back, shocked by the woman’s change in manner.

  “Listen here, eh?” the old woman said. “The longer you dally, the greater the chance that I will not be able to leave this place. Go now, like I told ye to and no harm will come to the child. If ye stay then I cannot promise what will happen.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, deary! If you trust the great white dragon, then trust me. Go now!”

  Dantress ran from that place, not venturing to glance back.

  Evela, running beside her, started to turn her head, looking back. “No, Evela,” Dantress instructed. “Don’t let anything distract you … We must reach the Eiderveis River before night falls.”

  The cold, demonic hands slipped reluctantly off Specter’s shoulders and arms, icy fingernails dug into his back. He had guarded the retreating daughters of the white dragon for as long as he could, holding back the demonic phantoms haunting the temple’s sublevels. The twisted forms of men and women flitted in and out of view as he charged for the stairway leading outside, glancing over his shoulder at the half circle of would-be-captors.

  They evaporated like mist fleeing before a strong wind, then reappeared, sometimes full bodies visible, at other times— fragmented as if unable to take full human form. Their fingers clawed toward him, their blind eyes showed white. Veils of cloth hung heavily off their bodies, if one could call their burned and scarred forms bodies.

  Stumbling over his own feet, another one of them drew close behind Specter, latching onto his white cape with serrated teeth. Specter swiped his blade between the being’s unseeing white eyes, and it split into misty tendrils and vanished.

  Only a dozen more steps to the stairway.

  “Waittt,” the being whispered, reappearing in front of Specter. “The path, the path, the path into darkness … It waits for you, too. Do feel it, feel ittt. Become the new master … this ancient place … Learn its secret … learn its secret … eternal mastery of the universe.”

  “Light cannot be joined with darkness, demon!” Specter’s gray cape twirled around his leg as he spun on his heel. He swung his scythe blade and cut the demon in half.

  The being’s separated torso stretched out with misty tendrils and latched onto its motionless legs.

  Specter did not wait to see if the being would reassemble itself. He forced his ice cold legs to ignore the pain of a million penetrating needles. Up the stairs he ran until he at last emerged outside. A bolt of green lightning reflected off the broken towers and illuminated the shadows amidst the ruins.

  In the distance the six young women ran into the forest.

  Specter passed over the ancient drawbridge and approached the canoe. The old woman crooned to the baby and a tear rolled down her cheek. “It was the only way to save them, eh?” she said, kissing the infant’s forehead gently.

  Lightning cracked. Specter stepped closer to the old woman. “Do not be afraid.”

  “What? Who’s there?”

  Specter did not show himself, but stood still, his eyes fastened on a group of eight soaring on the wind. Drusa had returned.

  He looked down at the old woman in the canoe. Something familiar about her … a warm, sunny day back when … but he could not complete the picture in his mind.

  “Eh, who is there?” the old woman said, searching all around with her eyes. “Who are ye?”

  “We both serve the same master, Enlightenment,” Specter answered. He did not know
how he knew her name, but he said it anyway, then looked southward. “Now, go! I will hold them off until you and the child are safe.”

  The dragons and the It’ren were close now. He turned to look again at the canoe—but it was nowhere in sight.

  A spot of light hovered star-like six feet off the ground, spitting out strands of energy and expanding until the portal began to open. Soon the sisters would be able to pass through to the realm of their father. Dantress scanned the sea, then the shoreline and the river behind them. The old woman in the canoe was nowhere to be found.

  They should not have left her alone.

  Fiercely the wind now blew, kicking up the sand and biting the sea until it frothed. Dantress shivered, half from the chill sneaking through her garment and half from the foreboding darkness gathering in the sky. Clouds covered the sun, thunder rumbled—or was it the distant sounds of combat?

  She shifted her eyes from the opening portal, her way home to safety.

  Green energy zipped from the sky to the southwest, targeting a portion of the forest west of the Eiderveis River.

  “Something’s not right.” She gripped her sword’s handle tight and reached out with her mind, groping through the forest for any clue as to what had happened to the old woman and the child.

  Caritha’s hand grasped Dantress’s shoulder. Dantress looked at her. Eyebrows knitting together, lips pressed tight, the older sister shook her head. “We have done our part, Dantress. Now we must wait.”

  “Wait? But Caritha, what if—”

  The portal opened to its full aperture and an enormous white body shot through it, wings spreading as it passed over the sisters. “Father!”

  But the great white dragon did not so much as turn his head as he soared into the sky and out of sight.

  The portal fizzled with energy and another figure emerged, this one much smaller. With his shepherd’s curved staff in hand, the wrinkled, kindly man smiled at the sisters and spread his arms wide. A gust of wind caught his hood, it slipped from his head and folded over his back. “Well done! Well done, indeed!” He kissed each of them on the forehead and slapped the dust from their shoulders.