“Are we going to see the obelisk?” Wylan asked.
“You’ve never seen one before?” Josef asked. “I thought you traveled a lot.”
“Around the farm, but I’ve never seen an obelisk.”
“Strange,” Millie said, “they seem to be everywhere close to towns.”
In the end the obelisk wasn’t anything amazing. The most amazing thing about the structure was its towering height. Along the sides of the pillar were several engravings that had been weathered away by the wind and sand. Wylan could just make out figures bent low before upright bodies. She figured that the upright bodies were the gods.
She let her eyes wander up the incredible height of the obelisk until they reached the top, where something shimmered in the sun.
“What’s that at the top?” Wylan asked.
“A statue of a dragon holding some kind of stone,” Millie said.
“Some kind of stone? What kind of stone?” Wylan asked.
Millie shrugged. “None that people can identify.”
“That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” she wondered.
“Wanna take a better look?” Josef asked, mischief in his eye.
“Yea,” Wylan said as Josef started to strip. In moments he’d shifted into the blue wyvern and was kneeling for Wylan to get on his back. She looked at Millie questioningly.
“He should be strong enough to take you to the top,” she said with a nod. Millie cast an eye toward the sky. “I haven’t seen any dragons today; it should be okay. Just keep an eye out.”
Wylan didn’t bother using Josef’s clothes as a saddle, she wasn’t going to be on his back long enough to chafe. He leapt into the air before she was completely ready, and she let out a yelp, clutching tight to his neck as his wings slowly took them higher. Flying on the back of a wyvern was different than flying in her form. Her head shifted sickeningly, and more than once she thought she was going to pitch off Josef’s side and plummet to her death. Several times she had to close her eyes to stop her gorge from rising. Eventually she calmed enough to take in more of the obelisk.
If she thought the frescoes of figures and beasts on the obelisk would get clearer the higher they went, she was mistaken.
Josef swept around the obelisk in a dipping, swaying loop until they were at the top, where he hovered, swooping his wings powerfully so they remained in the air.
At the top of the obelisk was the statue of a dragon, its head raised to the heavens, its body stretched up as if about to take flight. Its wings were open and so was its mouth, though not in a cry of rage but a triumphant bay of reverence. In its front legs, clasped as if in a human hand, was an odd stone like Wylan had never seen before. It was round and many faceted, with smooth lines along the surface. It wasn’t a perfect orb, but close enough that Wylan doubted it could have come out of the earth that way. Deep within the stone shone with darkness, as if with another life, another essence that housed a consciousness, an intelligence. She reached out with her mind, wondering if she could feel thoughts within the stone, but whatever was inside churned and pushed her away, not wanting to give up its secrets. On the surface the afternoon sun shimmered in rainbow hues.
:What’s the purpose of this stone?: Wylan wondered.
:No one knows. Does it have to have a purpose?: Josef asked into her mind.
:No,: Wylan said. It was strange though.
:Do you see that over there?: Josef asked.
Wylan looked around for a moment, but she couldn’t see what Josef was talking about. :What?: she asked.
:I’m going to take a closer look. Do you want me to put you down first?:
:No.: Wylan checked the sword at her waist to be sure it was easy to draw if she needed it. They’d come up against a lot of nasty things so far in the long desert, and she didn’t want to consider being in a situation where she couldn’t easily draw her sword.
As Josef took them closer, Wylan could see what he was talking about. She couldn’t see a figure, but she could feel the energy of whatever was out there. It appeared to her in a haze of black mist rising on from the desert. She knew there was something, or someone, at the heart of the energy, but she couldn’t see them.
Whispers stole across her mind, not the kind she might feel from mind-speaking, but the kind that intruded on her thoughts without heed they were doing so. She knew the whispers, the perversions and twisted tongues of some ancient language came from the energy. She felt them snake across her mind, twisting her thoughts and filling her head with dark images of blood and flesh and worms that crawled somewhere between the two.
:We need to get away from that,: Wylan said to Josef. She didn’t want to speak aloud, worried that whatever was at the root of the convergence of power might hear her.
:I agree.:
:Do you know what it is?: Wylan asked. :Are you able to see anything more than I am?:
:A shape,: Josef said. :Hold on.:
Wylan gripped him tighter as he dipped into a loop and headed back toward Millie. Before they’d made it to the obelisk, however, there was a great concussion of air, and they were falling.
Geffrey stiffened beside Millie. She turned to the boy wondering what could be wrong when she noticed the far off stare that yellows got when they were seeing something that was beyond the normal range of the mind to see. Something between the worlds, the realm of visions that few minds could access.
“Old powers awaken, and one is near!” The boy’s face contorted to a mask of pain, as if he were feeling something inside his vision.
“Geffrey, what do you see?” Millie asked, kneeling before him. She knew better than to touch him, doing so might bring him out of the vision. She knew he could be in pain from what he was seeing, and Millie cursed herself for letting him stay in the vision. But fear trembled through her limbs. His words had mirrored so closely those of Grandmother Fire that she needed to know what he was seeing, and how close it was.
“Wizard,” Geffrey breathed. “Dark magic. It’s Leaghan from High Haven.”
It chilled Millie to think the wizard had found them. “How close?”
Geffrey’s shoulders trembled and a tear leaked from his eye. His vision returned to normal, and he looked up into Millie’s dark eyes, his blue one filled with fear. “She’s hurt Wylan and Josef.”
“Dammit,” Millie swore. She hoped that Josef would heal more in his wyvern form. His head injury might have been good enough to shift and fly, but to fight a wizard…? She pushed to her feet and stared off in the direction the two of them had flown. She hadn’t been paying attention to them, she knew at one moment they were in the air, and when she turned back moments later she didn’t see them. She could feel it now, the dark magic of the wizard. It rose before her like a blackened cloud of bees swarming closer, ready to take them over. There was little she could do. She had a sword, but what good was that? She had her poison, but she hated to use that on a person. Not all wizards were bad, most of them were good, but without training, this one had been taken over by the magic. Who knew how dangerous she was? They’d seen a bit of her power in High Haven, but Millie had the feeling that was just the tip.
“I’m going with you,” the boy said, shucking his clothes.
“No. I need you to stay with Kira.”
“They are hurt, I need to help!”
Millie sighed. It was too much, having children here and her companions out there in the long desert. She needed to move fast before the wizard was on them. Maybe they aren’t hurt that bad? She thought.
:Wylan?: she sent, envisioning the girl’s golden eyes in her mind, as if she were standing right before her. Her mind speech wasn’t strong, and she rarely used it. She wasn’t even sure it would work this time.
She felt a stirring on her mind; confusion and pain.
:Wylan, can you hear me?:
The confusion responded, but it was in a sickening swirl of uncertainty.
:Are you hurt?: she asked.
:I’m all right,: Wylan said, though th
e pain was evident in her voice. :We didn’t fall far. What happened?:
:Wizard, we are coming for you,: she told Wylan, and turned to Geffrey. “We need to keep the baby safe. If we hide her at the base of the obelisk, can you mentally shield her?”
Geffrey nodded, though uncertainty showed in his eyes. Millie found a spot at the base of the pillar where a dune rose up, blocking the view from people that came from the same direction they had. She lower Kira down, hoping the baby didn’t fuss. Kira only looked back at her, as if her blue eyes knew the weight of the situation. Geffrey stepped forward when Millie stepped back. There was a shimmer in the air, and moments later Millie could no longer see the baby.
“All right,” Millie said, undressing. “You stay behind me.”
“I can help.”
“You can’t fight this,” Millie told him.
“Neither can you guys,” he said. “I can protect them though.”
Millie stopped short of shifting, a smile spreading across her face. “Oh, you smart boy, you’re right.”
Wizard, Wylan thought. Was it the same one from High Haven, or was it yet another wizard? Her shoulders ached all the way up into her head. She shifted to the side, trying to look behind her, to get her face out of the sand, but moving hurt too much. She sobbed in pain. Her leg throbbed. She fell back to the sand, hearing the sound of beating wings coming to her aid and feeling the malignant power of the wizard gathering at her back.
What had it done to them? She’d heard of wizards in her stories, and in those stories they were all bad. She was sure not all wizards were bad, but she’d never given it much thought. As far as she knew wizards hadn’t existed since before the dragons left.
She groaned and tried to roll over as the wings settled and two forms thumped to the ground—one big and one small.
:Don’t try to move,: Millie’s voice came to her mind.
Easy for her to say when Wylan couldn’t breathe without sand tickling her nose and burning deeper parts of her head. She was surrounded in warmth and she could feel the healing energy of the green wyvern slipping through her body. The throbbing in her head abated as the warmth from the healing energy worked its way through her skull and slowly into her shoulders.
Soon she felt well enough to roll over, even if her leg throbbed dizzyingly. She lay on her back, trying to stop the sensation of the desert spinning underneath her.
The green energy worked lower, but she didn’t feel any more of the energy coming from Millie. She had stopped sending her energy into Wylan.
Wylan opened her eyes and saw before them a gaunt girl, no older than she was. Her blond hair hung in greasy threads around her head. Her brown tunic and dark trousers seemed too big on her. Her eyes were vacant, her mouth slack. She had the graceful gait, and the pointed ears of an elf. This was the one they’d been abducted to help.
Millie roared. Green energy billowed from her mouth. Wisps of her wyvern toxin enveloped the girl and she stumbled back. If the magic wraiths were anything like the scale wraiths, they were in for a fight. She could only imagine that the magic wraiths were someone lost to their own magic, much like the scale wraiths were lost to the power of the scales.
Geffrey, seeming small and insignificant, took guard before Wylan and Josef. There was a strange listing to her head and she saw the air shimmer around him, turn yellow, and soon he was surrounded by an orb of yellow that seemed textured, as if with scales. Wylan felt the air shimmer and saw the orb extend, washing over her body in a whisper of power as the healing energy dissipated in her leg. She could move without pain now, even if her leg was weaker than it had been before. She rotated her foot around jerkily and pushed up to her knees as the yellow orb finished surrounding her and Josef.
:It won’t hold long, but hopefully long enough,: Geffrey said, his voice strained. Wylan imagined one good magical blow would collapse the orb around them.
The elf stumbled out of the miasma of toxic green energy, a small gray orb around her. She set her sights on Geffrey, but the larger shape of Millie stepped before them, blocking out what Wylan could see.
But not for long.
A great cloud of blackness swarmed around Millie with the sound of hundreds of thundering wings. Within the black cloud, Wylan could see small shapes of birds, though they were indistinct, melting into the shadows and then reemerging from the cloud as if they were ghosts of their former selves.
Millie was lost from sight and the cloud hammered down on the tiny mental protections that Geffrey had put in place around them.
Fear rose in Wylan as she saw the yellow orb shiver and then splinter as if hundreds of tiny beaks were breaking through glass. The orb let out a psychic wail, and then collapsed. The cloud was on them.
Wylan called to her fire and it answered faster than ever before. She drew her sword, and then let her fire loose on the cloud. The toxic cloud shrink away from her. She stepped away from Geffrey and the immobile Josef, and the cloud turned toward her. She kept moving away, and the cloud followed.
She blasted out again, a ball of fire shooting into the black cloud, and then vanishing as if plunged into a large pool of water. The cloud shrank as if the fire were burning it away, dispersing the fog before the might of the sun.
And then the cloud was gone and the wizard screamed out. Wylan watched as a streak of lightning arched through the air between the wizard’s outstretched hand and Millie. Millie took to wing, barely avoiding the lightning before it hit her.
She batted at the wizard, keeping her attention focused on the wyvern rather than any other person there. It was enough for Wylan to slip up behind the wizard, grab her by the hair, and place her sword against her throat.
:Don’t kill her!: Millie commanded. :She’s not that far gone. I think I can reach her.:
Wylan considered it. The wizard was dangerous, she needed to be put down. They’d tried to reach her once before, at High Haven, and it hadn’t worked then. She was within Wylan’s reach and she was scared now.
Scared, Wylan thought. That wasn’t something she’d seen on the scale wraiths. She was scared and that was a very human emotion. Millie was right, there was something human inside her that had remained. Wylan grunted and brought the butt of her sword down hard on the girl’s head. She crumpled to the sand like a dead salamander.
“What do you intend to do with her?” Wylan wondered, staring down at the frail woman by the fire.
“Well, Geffrey needs to encase her mind. She will probably travel in a fog for a while, hopefully until we get back to Darubai. I will try healing her along the way,” Millie said.
“Can Geffrey keep her imprisoned that long?” she wondered.
“Let’s hope so.”
“What about Josef?” Wylan looked to the naked man beside her, his clothing draped over his modesty.
“He will be his annoying self in the morning,” Millie said. “But I’m sorry Wylan, I need to sleep now. Today has drained me.”
Josef dropped a dead lizard at her feet, but before the wyvern soul could take over, Wylan pushed Lissandra away and called her fire instead. She directed the flame toward the lizard, adjusting the heat so she didn’t burn it.
:What are you doing!?: Lissandra asked, outraged. :You’re ruining it!:
:I’m hungry, and I want to enjoy this!: Wylan said. :I will let you gorge on bloody lizard tonight.:
Lissandra harrumphed at her, and settled down. Wylan wondered if the wyvern soul was going to churn and slither around, upsetting her stomach, but she didn’t.
:Thank you,: Wylan said.
Lissandra ignored her.
It took her longer to eat the roasted meat than it would have if she’d just let Lissandra devour it, but afterward she felt sated in a way that she hadn’t in days.
A dull roar trumpeted from the distance, and Wylan shivered. The dragons had returned from their conquest of High Haven.
“They’re back,” Millie said, looking up. “I was hoping they’d stay clear so we could get Leagh
an on our back and take her to Darubai faster.”
The continued on foot for a while, Leaghan shambling along behind them. At least she could walk, even if her violet eyes were distant. She didn’t see the desert before them. Whatever she was seeing made her pretty face scrunch up in horror from time to time, but whatever warding Millie and Geffrey had cast on her mind kept those nightmares inside her head at least.
As they walked, Wylan observed Leaghan, wondering if the wards might crack. Her eyes were violet with swirls of white through them, like moonlight. Her wavy blond hair hung to the middle of her back, but it wasn’t adorned with flowers or vines as the other elves’ had been. Her arms were free of adornments as well. She wore simple brown trousers and a faded yellow tunic with the same blocky text around the neckline and wrists that Wylan had seen in the tunnel.
Content that she wasn’t going to break free in the foreseeable future, Wylan let her mind wander to what her companions were talking about.
Geffrey rode piggyback on Josef, prattling on about a dream he’d had the night before about ruined towns and the ashes of the dead and how he found all kinds of pretty gems and stones among the ruin that shined like the sun.
Josef and Millie seemed to take a lot of interest in what he was saying, asking questions about if he knew where the town was, and how many stones he found. Wylan wasn’t sure if they were interested in the stones, or if they were interested in his dreams. She knew he was a yellow wyvern and that he had the ability to see things others didn’t. Maybe they were interested in his gift of prophecy? How could one tell if the child was just having a dream, or if it was prophetic? Did everything he dreamed come true? Wylan wasn’t sure and was too tired and too full of the cooked lizard to ask.
She plodded along in a haze until it was time to stop for the night. Millie took Geffrey aside. Through the darkness Wylan could see the green energy of Millie’s power wreathing Geffrey’s head. It was so easy for her to forget that he’d suffered so much at the hands of the scale wraiths that Millie would have to help mend his mind.
Dragon Plagued: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 2) Page 14
