Kings, Queens, Heroes, & Fools

by M. R. Mathias

  Suddenly, it seemed that the lyna was hovering over the smooth floor. Hyden looked on curiously until the sharp edges of a stairway defined themselves in his eyes. Spike was leading him upward. He hadn’t seen any sort of light down here so he gnashed his teeth together to bear the stress and started up after the lyna. The stairway circled ever upward and seemed to have no end. Hyden, drenched in his own fluids, and shivering with fever, climbed up them for what might have been forever.

  ***

  Mikahl was somewhere over Westland riding on the back of his magical Pegasus when he spotted a big dark shape winging its way toward him. He was glad to see that Phen had found the dragon collar and was riding in the right direction. He reined the bright horse into a hover, and then let a wide crimson swath of magical energy burst up into the air as a beacon for the boy to see. The dragon banked and came toward him for a short time. Then suddenly it dove and sped away to the south. It was all Mikahl could do to keep up, much less gain on the sleek flying wyrm, but somehow the bright horse managed it. Mikahl saw that it wasn’t Phen on the dragon’s back. It was one of the red-robed priests he had seen gloating over him when he was incapacitated, and another rider. They were the ones who had set the trap for him and Princess Rosa. He decided that he didn’t want to miss the chance to eliminate such a formidable enemy. He urged the bright horse into a position above and slightly behind the powerful looking wyrm and then let loose a ripping streak of jagged yellow lightning at them. The crackling blast missed the riders, but tore a sizable hole in one of the dragon’s wings.

  The wyrm roared out in pain and wheeled itself in a new direction. The priest sent a spiraling blue blast of energy back up at Mikahl, but Ironspike’s shields absorbed the attack. The bright horse might have been slightly faster than Vrot, but it wasn’t nearly as agile in the air. The young black dragon used his long sinuous body to turn and spin and sent a spewing blast of its sizzling acid breath over Mikahl. Once again the High King’s sword absorbed the attack, but the vapor of the corrosive stuff made his eyes fill with tears and took his breath away. By the time he could see again, the wyrm had carried the priest far to the south. Mikahl’s eyes were streaming and blurring. He knew that, even if he caught back up with it, the dragon could outmaneuver him. He could barely fight the pain in his lungs. He cursed as he was forced to circle his fiery steed down to the earth.

  The bright horse was a magical extension of himself. It was manifested through Ironspike, but it wasn’t a real winged creature that could see, or act on its own accord. It couldn’t guide Mikahl if he couldn’t see. He didn’t have a choice, he told himself. Phen could remain invisible and hide awhile longer.

  Mikahl was glad when he saw that he was coming down over the marshlands south of Westland. There was plenty of water there. All he could think about by the time he had his feet on not-so-solid ground was washing his stinging orbs. It was with great relief that he knelt along the spongy shoreline and finally splashed water onto his face. Luckily for him he still had Ironspike in his hand, because an explosion of water and teeth came lunging up at him and took him by suprise.

  ***

  The winding stairway finally ended and another smooth expanse of blackness spread out in all directions. Another coughing session racked Hyden to the core, until he felt like he’d spat up half of his insides. He had to spend some time lying on the cold floor.

  Soon the lyna was moving purposefully away again. Hyden struggled to follow and found confidence that at least Spike was going where he wanted to.

  Hyden just wanted to lie down and die. All the moving and sweating was doing nothing for his body except spreading the venom deeper and deeper into him. He was glad that Mikahl, Phen and the Princess were all right. He’d seen Mikahl cleave Shaella’s head, and he’d felt the rage surge through the thing that used to be Gerard after it happened. How he’d survived the monster’s wrath was beyond him. As best as he could figure, he had been so out of it that Gerard probably thought he was dead. Or maybe, a tiny bit of him hoped, some inner part of Gerard had fought through to protect him. He’d seen his brother’s eyes when they first recognized him. The thing had even spoken his name. A shiver ran through Hyden and he started to cough again. He fell to his knees, leaned forward, and hacked for a very long while.

  For a time, he thought that this was it. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t focus. It was over. Thick drool ran from his mouth. It tasted strongly of blood and was full of tiny granules of his dissolving body. After a while, where all he could do was gasp for air with deep rasping heaves, he leaned his head back and said a prayer to the White Goddess.

  It was a short prayer, and not very polite. Why she would send him so far into hell just to die in a puddle of his own fluids was beyond him. He longed to be with Talon just one more time, to fly through the heavens and feel the air rushing past him, or maybe to climb to the heights of the nesting cliff, where Gerard had found the hawkling for him, so long ago. He coughed again and nearly heaved when he had to spit small bits of rotten flesh from his mouth. Tilting his head back to draw breath, something registered in his brain.

  “Light.”

  Hyden cocked his head. Had he heard that? Or was he just losing his mind as well as his innards? He looked around. The lyna was a few feet away walking in a curious circle. Hyden wiped his sweat drenched face with his shirt sleeve and tried to stand.

  “Light.”

  He heard it that time, but knew that he hadn’t heard with his ears. He looked at Spike. The lyna stopped and returned his gaze. He could barely see the little cat-like creature, but he knew it was what had spoken to him.

  “Light, follow,” Spike said and started off again.

  Hyden stumbled after the creature. He finally caught his pace so that he was walking more than falling. After a short exhausting jaunt, the lyna stopped.

  “Light,” it said simply.

  Hyden looked ahead of them. There it was, like a single star shining in the sky—a speck of light. It was impossible to judge how far away it was. A thousand yards maybe? A league? Who could say? Hyden didn’t care. He had to get to it before he collapsed into a fit. He knew he couldn’t survive another one.

  The light grew as he approached. Was it a doorway? A lantern? He couldn’t tell. After a few hundred more steps his heart sank. It hadn’t grown at all. It was still just as far away. To make things worse, he began to hear a scraping, grunting sound coming from behind him. Deep heavy breathing accompanied the noise. He wasn’t the only thing attracted to the light. He hurried his pace as best he could without falling down. He was sweating so profusely that he was leaving a trail of wet footprints. A glance back revealed a huge spidery shape with several legs. It was dragging something laboriously as it came, but it was coming nonetheless.

  “Hurry, light,” said Spike.

  “I’m falling apart,” Hyden replied out loud, thinking that the lyna didn’t understand, or care. Spike’s response surprised him.

  “The light can save you.”

  “Aye,” Hyden grunted, remembering the White Goddess saying something similar to him. In a rush of determination he focused his gaze on the illumination and pushed his pace. What the glowing speck in the distance was, he had no idea, but he told himself he would get there before the thing behind him caught up, or he would die trying.

  ***

  The long grueling hours of practice that Mikahl pushed himself through every morning paid off in one quick instant. He was on his knees at the edge of the water in grass that was as tall as his shoulders. The waterline was completely hidden, for the grass grew out of the water, as well as on the muddy bank. Mikahl was splashing handfuls of cool liquid up into his burning eyes. He didn’t see the wide swath of grass parting as an ancient snapper slithered toward him. His splashing masked any noise it might have made, except the exploding roar as it shot its huge bulk up out of the water at him.

  Mikahl’s lightning quick reflexes and brute strength allowed him to use the snout of the huge beast as
it came down at him. He pushed himself just out of the snapping jaws and rolled away through the muck as fast as he could. For once he was glad not to have his chain mail on. If he had been wearing it, the marsh monster’s teeth would have surely caught in it.

  He could barely see as the low-bodied gator ran at him across drier ground. Its mouth was a gaping pink smear against a darker background. It was huge. He could tell that it was big enough to bite him in half if it got a hold of him. He jabbed Ironspike at the thing and the sharp blade dug into the roof of the creature’s mouth. It stopped its charge then and backed away hissing. Mikahl could barely see it, but he took advantage of the snapper’s hesitance and charged. He waved Ironspike around menacingly until the big creature turned and slithered back into the water in search of an easier meal.

  It took a long while for Mikahl’s thundering heart to slow down. It took even longer before he felt that he could see well enough to chance the bright horse again. By the time he made it back to Lakeside Castle to look for Phen, the sun had long since sunk beyond the ocean. It came as no surprise to find that Phen was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Through the night, Mikahl waited for Phen to show himself. He sat on the balcony of Queen Shaella’s bedchamber looking out over the destroyed garden area where he’d left the boy. He called his name every so often, but there was no reply. He even walked the corpse strewn yard using Ironspike’s light to search the bodies. He didn’t find Phen, but he learned that Shaella’s head and body were no longer there. He was woken from a nap he’d fallen into when someone started banging on the door to Shaella’s chamber. He used all the shields and guards he could find in Ironspike’s symphony and then threw open the door ready to fight. What he found was a trembling young zard girl.

  At that moment Mikahl realized something: Westland was still full of zard. He couldn’t just vent his rage and start killing skeeks, though. He looked over the zardess and saw a trio of others at the end of the long, wide entry hall. Two skeeks were guarding a human woman. The woman took a step back and her hand lifted to cover her mouth. Mikahl vaguely recognized her as Lady Able of Eastwatch.

  “It’s true, then?” she asked through tears of joy. Almost immediately, her shoulders squared and she shoved her way past the two startled lizard-men who were guarding her. Her walk was dignified and she held her head proudly as she strutted toward Mikahl. When she neared the door she spoke to the young zard girl. Her voice, though tender, had a cold edge to it. “Tell your kind to leave the castle at once, Fslandra,” she said. “Your Dragon Queen is dead,” she looked at Mikahl for confirmation of the fact. He nodded. “The zard have no place here anymore. Tell them, Fslandra. Go.”

  Mikahl was dumbfounded. He wasn’t ready for this. “M’lady,” he said to Lady Able. “Leave them be for now. Come, I will take you to a place that is safe.” A thought occurred to him. “Are there any others who need to be escorted to safety?”

  She looked at him as if he were mad. “The people of Westland don’t need to be escorted anywhere, they need their king.” She looked him in the eyes and her expression deflated. “You’re not here to take back our kingdom?”

  “Soon, m’lady,” he said, feeling awkward and foolish for not expecting to be needed in such a way by these people. “There’s only myself and this.” He indicated Ironspike’s softly glowing blade. “I cannot defend the entire kingdom alone.”

  She nodded understanding. “I’ll fetch the girls then.”

  Girls? Mikahl wondered what he was getting into.

  A glance back down the hall revealed that the two zard guards and the young zardess had fled.

  Mikahl hoped that Phen was all right. He’d given the boy plenty of opportunity to rejoin him. The idea that maybe the priest or the dragon had done the boy harm crossed Mikahl’s mind, but if that were the case, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He had faith that Phen was capable of taking care of himself. King Jarrek and the eastern army needed him. He needed sleep, and time to think too. He didn’t really have time to be carrying women to safety on his magical stead. At least that’s what he was telling himself when three young girls ranging from two years to maybe seven came scurrying into the chamber. Each one of them was a bit smaller and more afraid than the last. They looked terrified just to be in Mikahl’s presence, and suddenly, getting these teary-eyed angels to safety was the only thing Mikahl could think about. To his surprise another face, one he recognized, and the huge bosom that went with it, came into the room with Lady Able. A pair of nervous servant men carrying large kitchen knives followed protectively.

  Missy, the kitchen girl whose breasts were so large that they were often spoken of around campfires all over the realm, gave him a dirty-faced smile, and then went to herding the young girls into a tight group.

  Not long after, Mikahl, with two tiny bodies in front of him, and the third slip of a girl clinging to his back as if her life depended on it, rode the bright horse off of the balcony and began winging their way eastward. Mikahl had promised Lady Able and Missy that he would return when he could. He explained that there was an army waiting on him in Dakahn and that he would have to stop there for a time. The two men understood and one of them went down to the kitchens to get more supplies in case they had to hole up in the chamber for a few days. Mikahl waited until he returned and was glad to see that a few more castle folk had joined the group.

  During all of this, Phen lay down in the bailey yard, half under a shrub at the corner of the garden with Talon nested on his chest. The High King had passed them by half a dozen times through the night but hadn’t seen them because they were invisible. Even if they’d been conscious, neither Phen nor the hawkling could have moved. Before flying away on the back of the black dragon, the last red-robed priest had turned both of them to stone.

  ***

  Escott, commanding the fifteen thousand troops sent to Oktin, had taken the city the day before Queen Willa and King Granitheart arrived. Now a force that was over thirty thousand strong was turning south to march toward O’Dakahn. The first night they made camp was the only night they met any resistance. The huge gorax demon came stomping through the encampment in the predawn hours and killed nearly a thousand men with its brutal club and potent spells. But the great black-chested beast was only passing through.

  Nothing the humans did managed to do so much as irritate the hell-born creature. Even Queen Willa’s witchy spells did little other than rankle it as it pounded a bloody path through the ranks. But it didn’t stay and fight, it continued north as if it had an agenda, as if the time spent killing thousands of men had made it fall behind schedule.

  In Lokahna, Master Amill and Commander Escott watched as Queen Willa and her formidable army came marching in from the north. Once the two forces combined, they numbered over thirty-five thousand men and dwarves. Now that they held the two main crossing points, getting more troops from Seaward was only a matter of making the orders.

  They didn’t know it in Lokahna yet, but already the Queen of Seaward was mustering up another sizable force to join them. After learning that her daughter was safe in Dreen and that Rosa had been tortured and maimed, Queen Rachel vowed to give the High King her fealty and to help him eradicate any who held even the slightest bit of loyalty to the lightning star.

  Queen Willa let King Granitheart and Commander Escott take command of the huge force and left Master Amill in charge of communicating with King Jarrek and Master Sholt, who were now marching their men and dwarves south to meet them. She decided to return to Dreen. General Spyra’s situation was affecting his judgment, and Lord Gregory had no designs to rule over Valleya in his stead.

  King Granitheart and Commander Escott agreed that a direct march on O’Dakahn was best. Their forces were far too large to try to sneak around. They figured that they could easily push Ra’Gren’s might behind O’Dakahn’s walls and force a siege.

  They underestimated the enemy, though. Neither of them counted on Flick and the
Choska demon, or the young black dragon. If they had, they might have been able to save half of the great army they commanded from the horrible death that awaited them.

  ***

  Hyden was only a dozen paces away from the source of the light he had been staggering toward. The very instant he realized it was the ring his brother had found on the hawkling nesting cliffs so long ago, he also realized it was on something’s long claw-tipped finger. What the long dark insectoid creature was, he couldn’t say, but he felt sorry for it when it started to attack him as if it were the one springing the trap.

  Behind the creature, in the dim light of the ring, Hyden saw Gerrard coming down claws first. The mantis-like demon wearing the ring crumbled and screamed beneath the self-proclaimed Warlord of Hell. Hyden had to dive out of the way to keep from falling right into the fray. He was mortified at the savage power that Gerard unleashed on the creature. It took the same amount of time for him to stumble to the floor as it did for Gerard to tear the thing into slimy shreds.

  The light of the ring faded as the life of its wearer leaked away. The victor began feeding on the greenish gore of the creature, which helped Hyden disassociate the little brother he had loved so much from the monster before him. This wasn’t Gerard. It might have eyes that looked like Gerard’s. It might even have fleeting thoughts that stemmed from some piece of Gerard’s memory that survived deep down, but it was not Gerard. It was some malformed demon beast that was content to be feeding on the ruined body of another hell-born creature.

  Hyden managed to crawl to the edge of the bloody mess and locate the ring on the dead beast’s finger. He reached for it and grabbed hold of the elbow that was still attached to the lower part of the limb. As he pulled it toward him, Gerrard saw the dying twinkle of the ring and roared. His huge head loomed down and peered at it.