Dragon Breeder 5

by Dante King

  My words trailed off as a large shadow detached itself with inhuman silence from the dense shadows at the very end of the hallway. Behind it, I could just make out a set of gleaming cherry wood doors.

  The man, if it was a man, simply radiated malevolence. Every line and sinew of him spoke of someone who relished cruelty like some people relish food or drink. In his hand hung a huge hammer, the head of which almost touched the floor. He was cursed with a face that was so ugly that I couldn’t help but assume that his hair must have caught on fire at some point and someone else had tried to put it out with a brick.

  I shot him right in the face with the Repeating Hand Crossbow that Garth’s mana allowed me to summon. Three times. Black blood, along with gooey clumps of dark purple brain matter, burst out of the back of his skull and splattered up the wall and ceiling behind him like a carnivore’s breakfast porridge.

  The huge man growled, took a step, and then fell dead in the corridor.

  I looked down at Will.

  “Still,” I said, “one’s not bad, is it?”

  Will revolved slowly to face me and then revolved back to look at the fallen giant. He said nothing. Even if he’d been capable, I doubted the little specter would have said a word.

  Together, we moved cautiously down the luxuriously understated corridor, stepped over the massive corpse pooling blood in great quantities across a rug that probably cost as much as a peasant’s house, and then tried the door handle to the gleaming cherry wood doors.

  They were locked.

  I snorted out of my nostrils the metallic stench of blood, which was quickly filling the corridor. I leaned against the door, closed my eyes, and focused my dragon-enhanced hearing into the room beyond.

  I could hear no sound beyond the doors.

  “Anyone?” I asked the dragons in my head.

  “I can’t smell anything, old man,” Garth said.

  “Me neither,” said Wayne.

  “I don’t smell anything… living,” Brenna said.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  I could feel Brenna concentrating. “It’s hard to say,” she said. “Like, there could be something in there, but it doesn’t smell alive so to speak. Not as things with blood usually smell, if that makes sense.”

  “I feel you, sister,” Cyan said carefully.

  “I have to concur with the females, Father,” Pan said. “There is something organic, maybe, beyond the doors, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly using your humanoid nasal passages.”

  “All right,” I replied, “thanks guys.”

  Then, just as someone might check their pockets one last time, even though they’ve already done it twice and know for a fact that their keys aren’t in any of them, I checked the doors again. I pushed and pulled them gently, careful not to make a noise that someone on the other side might hear.

  Still locked.

  I sighed softly and looked down at Will.

  “Remember, bud,” I told the wisp, “choosing your actions is like choosing your shoes; you always want them to fit the occasion.”

  I looked down at Will’s distinct lack of legs, feet, or shoes, as the wisp tilted his body up to regard me.

  “You know what I mean though, right?” I said a little exasperatedly.

  Then, turning my attention back to the door, I raised my boot.

  Chapter 18

  The cherrywood door exploded off its hinges and flew across the width of the long room beyond, smashing into the far wall in a shower of splinters.

  Then, there was a silence, broken only by the soft tinkling thud as a couple of the hinges fell out of the door jamb and dropped to the floor.

  Will glowed a lighter, slightly surprised shade of yellow.

  “What?” I said, my eyes flicking down to him briefly before the two of us stepped over the threshold into the opulent room beyond. “I told you; actions are like shoes. The door was locked and now it’s not and we’re in. I’d say kicking it in fit the occasion. This is the place?”

  Will throbbed an affirmative shade of amber.

  The room that I had just broken into was ridiculously luxurious. Whereas there had been an element of understated taste to the outside opulence of the outside corridor, in here, in what Will assured me was the inner sanctum of the Shaykh’s pad, it was all gaudy as hell.

  “I guess Shaykh Antizah must have decorated this room personally, huh?” I said softly, looking around.

  It was full of golden weapons, artifacts of an obviously magical caste, massive jewels lying on velvet cushions in glass display cases, and all the other sort of things that ludicrously rich people get off on.

  To my layman’s eye, the rectangular room looked like nothing less than a private museum or collection—the equivalent of Aladdin’s cave, stuffed to bursting with enough treasure of one sort or another to drop the jaw of even the most vulgar and ostentatious pro NFL player.

  There was also, as I took more of the place in, something of the dojo about the room. Yes, there were display cases with spellbooks that were rifling through their own pages to show off their trickier incantations, but there were also racks of weapons in a far corner and a number of dummies that looked like they regularly got the stuffing knocked out of them.

  “So, the Shaykh isn’t totally useless, perhaps,” I said to myself.

  That was good to see and good to know. If there was one thing that modern cinema had taught me, it was that it is a foolish man who walks into an adversary’s lair and takes him lightly. It was a much more prudent policy to overestimate someone and then be surprised at how easy it was to wipe the floor with their face, rather than underestimate them and then play the role of human mop yourself.

  Will and I moved through the glittering rows of glass cases, taking in the collections of emerald-encrusted daggers, mirror bright coats of mail, helmets fashioned into the heads of dogs and serpents, rings with rubies as big as chicken eggs, desiccated hands clutching perpetually burning candles, the shrunken heads of orcs, and a host of other magical and non-magical paraphernalia that I was sure caused Shaykh Antizah to crack a little ego-boner every time he came in here.

  We were looking for a crystal, which I thought would have been fairly simplistic. Crystals however, are shiny, and we were hampered by the fact that almost everything inside this private collector’s wonderland was glimmering, glittering, winking, and sparkling at us.

  “Where is it, Will, where’s the damned thing we’re looking for?” I called softly to the wisp, who had headed off down another row of glass cases. “Where…”

  I stepped out into the open space at the back of the long room.

  “...is it?” I finished.

  There, in pride of place, in the middle of this sort of dojo-cum-private museum, was a magnificent magical crystal.

  I was no gemologist, but even I could tell that this is what we had come for. This was what we needed to destroy; it was so obviously magical. The chunk of naturally-shaped crystal was about the size of a gnoll’s head—pumpkin-size—and set upon a simple silver stand. It was glowing a deep crimson and pulsating with a steady rhythmic tempo.

  Whum-whum, whum-whum, whum-whum, whum-whum.

  It was the measure of a heartbeat, I realized. I wondered if it was mirroring the Shaykh’s own.

  It was captivating certainly, but I had also learned from movies such as Mission Impossible II and The Rock, that once the item of a search was found, you didn’t mess around being captivated by it or slipping into a series of flashbacks, you got on with destroying it, disarming it, or stealing it.

  “Will!” I called, not bothering to keep my voice down now. I was thinking of Tamsin, Zala, Kakra, Renji, and Hana. They were outside somewhere, at that very moment, drawing every guard in the palace toward the harem, pulling off whatever distraction they had come up with.

  “Will!” I called again, and the wisp appeared at my elbow as if by magic.

  “Will, get out of here now, I’ve got this,” I said. “Ge
t to Hana and Renji and the rest of them and let them know in no uncertain terms that it’s time for them to get the fuck out of there. Got it?”

  Will flashed once, a bright yellow.

  “Good. You did some more epic tracking today, pal. Great work. Now go!”

  With another brief, pleased flash, Will zoomed away at knee height and out of my sight.

  When he was gone, I turned my attention back to the crystal.

  “All right, Shaykh Antizah,” I said, “let’s even the playing field a little.”

  I stepped across, meaning to take in the crystal from every angle so as to make sure there was no sort of magical defense that was going to blow some crucial part of my anatomy off.

  I stopped.

  “Ah,” I said. “Balls.”

  There was another crystal; less impressive in its appearance than the one pulsating with the heartbeat, but also obviously magical. It was connected to a series of glass tubes that snaked out and disappeared into evenly spaced alcoves set into the walls. These alcoves were covered over with paper or a type of very thin wood.

  It was fair to say that I was torn, in that moment, as to what crystal I should nail first.

  I decided that the prudent thing to do would be to smash them both apart.

  But which one first?

  It had to be the beating crystal heart. Something like that, so clearly enchanted and glowing with that eerie almost organic rhythm… That had to be important in some way.

  I transferred Pan’s Tempest Dragon mana into Weapon Slot A with a thought. The Stormhammer, crackling and dancing with miniature lightning bolts all across the head and haft, felt good in my hand.

  “Time for some spring cleaning,” I said.

  I raised the Stormhammer over my head and brought it smashing down onto the jagged tip of the beating heart crystal. There was, for all my dragon-boosted strength, far more resistance to the blow than I thought there would be. Post Transfusion Ceremony, a dragonmancer was imbued with the brawn to punch boulders apart and turn blades with their bare flesh. The beating crimson crystal, however, put up a bit of a fight.

  I had been expecting to blast the pretty thing into smithereens, but instead, a series of fiery cracks spread over the whole surface of the crystal. I thought, just for a moment, that I was going to have to turn up the heat and give it another whack, but then the crystal simply burst apart like a glass grenade, causing me to throw up my hands to protect my eyes instinctively. It went off silently, in a spray of scything shards that peppered my front and tinkled off the glass cases behind me, shattering some of the closer panes of expensive glass.

  The Stormhammer vanished. When I lowered my hands, all that was left of the crystal were a few large chunks of dull gray stone on the ground, the silver stand and, grossly, a greasy smell of charred flesh.

  That was one piece of magical bling down. One to go. Just to be on the safe side.

  I turned my attention to the other less flashy gemstone that was sitting in a groove on a plain stand of carved ivory. The glass tubes snaking out of it tugged at my memory, but all I wanted to do was get it broken so that I could get out of there and go hunting for the head honcho, the slave driver, Shaykh Antizah.

  I summoned the Stormhammer and slammed it into this one. The crystal shattered, and the glass tubes fell to the ground. Strangely, those tubes remained intact, obviously made of some very strong kind of material.

  There was a cry from my right.

  It was one of those satisfyingly heart-rending cries, the kind that slips past the lips of the utterer before they so much as have a chance to try and rein it back. Involuntary. Amazed. Despairing.

  It was Shaykh Antizah. I watched as he slid out of yet another concealed door—it made me wonder just how many secret doors and hidden passages there were in this place—and hurry toward me.

  I tensed, readying myself to tear the little bastard’s head off at the slightest provocation, but it didn’t look like the Shaykh was too interested in me. His whole attention was riveted on the shards of broken gray rock, which was all that remained of his occult crystals, all that remained of the magical items that had anchored the lives of all his catmancers to his own.

  “What the - what in the name of the heavens and all their gods have you done!?!?” he screeched. He looked ready to tear his perfect little beard off, he was in such a state.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I replied coolly. “I broke your funky red disco ball. Slip of the hammer. You know how it is.”

  The Shaykh was rummaging through the ruins of the crystals with his foot while simultaneously pressing at his chest with one heavily beringed hand. I saw then that he was not dressed in the finery that was usual for him. The casual silk robes that I had only ever seen him in had been replaced by some harder wearing linens, though they still made anything that normal folk wore look like rags.

  Over the top of these he wore a suit of golden overlapping mail, which reminded me of fish’s scales, so neatly did all the scales fit together. The glorious mail coat fell to his knees and covered his shoulders, while his neck and arms were covered in some of the finest mesh chainmail that I had ever seen—even including the stuff that Drako Academy dragonmancers were equipped with. At his belt hung a sword, the hilt of which was gold encrusted with sapphires and yellow diamonds.

  I thought I might keep that as a souvenir, once I had taken care of the slave-driving bastard.

  “What have you done?” Shaykh Antizah said again, more quietly this time. He knelt down, took some powdered crystal in one hand, and let the dust spill out between his clenched fingers.

  “I told you,” I said in an even tone, “I was having a look around this fascinating shrine to wealth that you have here when I felt that special urge, and I thought to myself, ‘It’s hammer time!’”

  The Shaykh didn’t seem to see the funny side of this.

  The absolute ruler of Akrit rose to his feet. His eyes flashed as he turned his gaze on me. I had never actually seen eyes flash until then. I mean, I had heard of that happening in books and stuff, but never had I seen someone’s eyes actually flash. The dark, clever eyes glowed a sudden furious red.

  Someone looked like he was about to spit the dummy.

  “Why?” the Shaykh asked in a low, dangerous voice.

  “Why? Are you fucking kidding me, Antizah?” I retorted scornfully. “I know about the whole slavery angle. Zala told me how you have each and every catmancer in this kingdom under your sway. They have to do what you say when you say, otherwise they suffer just like I saw Zala suffer.”

  “I am the Shaykh here, you cretin,” he spat at me. “It is the way things have always been! The Shaykh of Akrit answers to no one, to nothing! Only the gods, if it be their will, might stop me, and then they would simply smite me down.”

  Shaykh Antizah held out his hands and looked up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes, and a horrible smile lit his features.

  “And yet they do nothing, do they?” he said.

  “They might not bother themselves by coming down and dealing with you directly,” I said, “but, perhaps, they might use another as their instrument.”

  The Shaykh put down his hands and sneered at me. He had a good face for sneering; sharp, angular, and filled with spite and greed.

  “We have an expression on my world, jackass,” I said. “It goes, ‘A little powder, a little paint, makes a girl look like what she ain’t.’ You might have harnessed the powers of your catmancers through coercion or some other means, but I’ve put a stop to that. Your crystal is broken, as are the bonds that you shared with the women you enslaved. All that’s left now is you, Antizah. There are no catmancers for you to torture if they don’t come to your aid. Even now, the ones that me and my friends have freed are laying waste to the guards that you sent to stop them. You’re mine.”

  Shaykh Antizah crouched to study the glass tubes that had once been attached to the second crystal. He caressed them and stared in the direction that they led, snak
ing away into the alcoves at the walls.

  “You might have broken the bond that bound myself and my catmancers together, your foreign dog,” Shaykh Antizah said. “You might have saved the life of that traitorous bitch, Zala—for now. All that though, matters but a little now. This, you backward Mystocean heathen, is your undoing!” he suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Before I could say anything, before I could react in any way, Shaykh Antizah screamed out a word in a tongue that was painful to hear. The word, whatever it was or meant, seemed to sizzle and burn in the air, in the way that fireworks sometimes burn into your retinas. It was a cruel word, filled with avarice and an incomparable contempt for the sanctity of the lives of others.

  So potent was the language that Antizah spoke then that I actually took an involuntary step back, bearing my teeth in an animal snarl.

  “Oh, shit…” I said.

  The word had somehow caused the glass pipes that had been attached to the second crystal to slam into the Shaykh’s body, embedding themselves into him through his armor.

  The Shaykh began to steam, even though air in the room we were in was already warm.

  It was heating up. Boiling inside.

  “What have you done, you stupid prick?” I growled at the Shaykh as I reached within myself to summon my Chaos Spear. At the same time, I conjured my helmet, courtesy of Pan, which enabled me to move with Lightning Speed should I need to.

  Shaykh Antizah did not answer. His face had gone rigid. His body was vibrating, his body fused to the now cherry red glass tubes. As one, the tubes connected to the alcoves on either side of the room began filling. Filling with a liquid that, with a sinking heart, I knew was blood.

  Then, with a rustling sigh, the alcoves down the sides of the room began to open. I whirled, thinking that a trap had just been sprung, but all that happened was that the papery partitions of the alcoves slid aside to reveal what had been lurking within.

  Catmancers.