***
“So tell me about your jhorun,” Steve said amiably to Mikal, as they walked outside into the fresh air. “We heard something about you enhancing other peoples’ jhorun. How does that work?”
“My jhorun is so lame that even a troll would laugh,” Mikal said miserably. For the umpteenth time he wished his jhorun was something different. “I can make someone’s jhorun stronger.” He eyed Steve. “Want me to enhance yer jhorun to try it out?” Another pyrotechnical demonstration would be an awesome way to brighten the day!
“I’ll take a rain check on that,” Steve muttered. “It’d be my luck that I’d blow up half the castle. As curious as I am to give that a try, I still have to learn how to control mine better. I’m still learning new things all the time.”
“Like what?” the boy wanted to know.
“For instance, last night. I thought for certain I had burned you. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t burn something I was touching if I didn’t want it to. Makes me wonder what else I can do and not know it.” Steve looked down at his new shadow. “Does that make sense to you?”
“Sure, by the time people here are yer age, they already have their jhoruns figured out.”
Sarah stifled a giggle. Steve glanced over to his wife. “Find that funny, do you? Snot.”
Wanting to change the subject before Mikal started asking more questions, Steve asked if their young friend might be able to show them around.
“I am under orders not to leave the castle without an armed escort,” Mikal complained, “but that does not mean I can not show ye around the perimeter. Not much to see. It’s rather dreary.”
Sarah laughed. “Says you! You live in a castle! In our world, there aren’t many castles around. We’d love to learn more about this one. I have a good friend back home, Lia, that absolutely loves castles. I want to be able to tell her as much as I can remember when I see her next.”
“Alright, follow me then.” He walked over to the moat and started walking along the water’s edge. “Bredo lives in there. He’s nice.”
“Did you say a burrito lives in there?” Steve asked, certain he had heard that wrong.
“Bredo is the serpent that guards the moat.”
“A snake? How big?”
“The largest I have ever laid eyes on. Ye do not want to go in there.” Mikal laughed. “A villager lost several bolgers in there once. Bredo got ‘em before they made it out. Wish I could have seen it.”
Making a mental note to not take a dip in the moat, Steve walked on, following his wife and their new friend. A sudden thought had him calling out to their small tour guide.
“Hey Mikal!”
Mikal glanced behind him and slowed his pace so Steve could catch up.
“Your father mentioned something about making an area specifically for use by dragons.”
Mikal nodded. He knew of the large area in the northern orchard. “Why do ye want to see that? It is boring.”
“Steve is fascinated by dragons,” Sarah explained. “If it were up to him he’d seek out the closest one and hop on its back.”
Mikal turned to give Steve an appraising stare. “Ye want to ride a dragon? Ye would not last long.”
“So I’ve heard,” Steve said. “I’d just like to see one.”
Walking alongside the young prince, Mikal started telling them all kinds of stories. Stories about adventures he and his friends had undertaken. All of his stories had the same theme: tales on how he was unjustly grounded for numerous happenings he really didn’t have a part in. They also learned that Mikal was extremely dissatisfied with his jhorun. Apparently it wasn’t considered very cool to have a jhorun that couldn’t physically manifest itself. “What fun is that?” he muttered darkly.
“I think it’s a very practical and powerful jhorun,” Sarah said quickly. “Being able to boost the strength of anyone’s jhorun must be incredibly useful.”
“Ye sound just like my mother,” Mikal accused.
“Sounds like your mom is pretty smart, huh?”
Mikal snorted. “She’s smart for a grown-up.” Remembering Sarah’s help from the night before, he looked over at the foreign woman. “Thanks again for hiding my slingshot for me. Had mom or dad caught me with that it would have been confiscated until I was old enough to marry. How did ye do that, anyway?”
“My jhorun is teleportation,” Sarah said. “Like yours, my jhorun won’t manifest itself either.”
“Teleportation? So ye can move things around?” He mulled that over a moment. “So that’s how ye kept getting the ring back without taking it out of my pocket.”
Sarah nodded.
They continued walking for another ten minutes, moving well past the outer castle garrison. Large fruit trees had been planted about three meters apart in rows of ten, of what type Sarah couldn’t say. She studied the heavily laden trees. She then stooped down to the ground to pick up one of the half-rotten fruits, rotating it in her hand. This one resembled a fat purple pear. She held it out to Mikal.
“What type of fruit is this?”
Mikal glanced over at her. “That is a jansa.” He pointed to the next grove of trees, with a round, yellowish citrus-type of fruit hanging from the branches. “Those are sidah. And those are loken,” gesturing to what looked like elongated red bananas in the next grove over. “The best tasting are the sidah. I do not care for loken. Jansa is also good, but messy.”
Leaving the grove of loken trees behind, the trio came upon the recently created dragon lair. Steve was unimpressed. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, only that he figured there should be more than what they found. Bare, rocky terrain with a few large trees in the distance met his eyes. The only vegetation dotting the landscape was small, chalky green bushes that were trying to grow in the stony earth. The one odd thing, though, was that there was an enormous mounded section of earth that was swelling gently upwards, as if an underground giant was pushing straight up.
Looking around, Steve was discouraged. It’s rather sparse, he thought. You’d think the king could have done better than this for the dragons.
That thought vanished from his head as they approached a mound of rocks and discovered it to be an opening to a vast tunnel angling steeply downhill. Steve’s mouth opened in shock. Look at the size of this tunnel! Two semis could drive side-by-side down this thing with room to spare. How big are these dragons anyway?
“What’s down there? Think we can take a look?”
“My father hollowed out a large cavern down there,” Mikal explained. “That’s why the ground here looks like someone is pushing up from below.”
“The mound is the roof of the cavern?” Steve whistled. That must be some cavern! He guesstimated it to be roughly three thousand meters square.
Sarah turned to Steve. “I don’t want to go down there. It looks really dark. Can we look at another time?”
Looking longingly at the dark tunnel before them, he shrugged and turned to go.
Suddenly four men wearing dark clothing came boiling out of the depths of the cavern. Sarah screamed a warning, grabbed Mikal, and held him close.
“Grab ‘em! Quickly now!” the leader barked to the henchman closest to Steve. Before he even realized what was happening, a thug had him in a bone-splitting bear hug. Thick, muscled arms held him firmly in place. “As long as ye have him close, he cannot harm ye!”
With Steve incapacitated, the two remaining thugs menacingly approached Sarah, who had shoved Mikal behind her.
In a surprisingly calm voice, Steve addressed his assailant. “You have one chance, buddy, to let go and haul ass outta here.”
Laughing heartily, the leader of the motley gang turned back to his victim. “Gag that scum, now!” He returned his attention to the two thugs who were approaching Sarah and Mikal.
“Will ye hurry up? We need to get out of here! Just kill the woman and grab the princ
e. Go!”
In one swift, fluid motion a goon had an arrow fitted to his bowstring. He pulled back and took aim at Sarah. But before the arrow could be released, it vanished, the bow following shortly thereafter. Dropping his now empty arms down to his side, the dimwitted thug looked to his boss for the next set of instructions.
Their leader, however, never got a chance to say a word, for in that moment, high-pitched screams pierced the air. The thug restraining Steve had just discovered he was holding a six foot three, white-hot poker. While Steve’s clothing remained unaffected by the sudden appearance of the searing heat, his unfortunate assailant’s apparel instantly burst into flames. Tattered bits of flaming cloth fluttered off the wailing thug, who desperately tried rolling on the ground to extinguish himself. Not making any headway, he then sprinted the ten or so meters to dive into the northern tip of the moat. Unfortunately for him, the largest serpent in captivity was waiting.
Snarling in anger, the leader leapt towards Steve, intending to do him in as quickly as possible.
Intense hatred permeated Steve’s body, causing his jhorun to also seethe in anger. Realizing his jhorun was clamoring to be released, Steve flung out his arm, palm facing out, as though he was performing a traffic stop. A jet of pure fire erupted from his hand and hit the approaching mercenary square in the chest. Clothing incinerated in a flash. Screaming in pain, the engulfed man threw himself into the moat as well. Liking cooked food just as well as raw, Bredo flicked his tongue in the direction of his barbecued snack and hurried to retrieve it before it sank all the way to the bottom.
Behind them, back inside the castle, Steve could hear soldiers talking and laughing with one another, completely oblivious to their predicament. Sarah and Mikal were in danger. He needed some help and he needed it now. Raising his left hand, he shot three jets of fire straight up. That should get someone’s attention, Steve thought. Now to deal with these last two goons. There was no way in hell he was going to let anyone so much as lay a finger on his wife or the young prince. Scowling, Steve turned to face his two remaining opponents.
One man lunged for the cowering boy hiding behind Sarah. In the blink of an eye, she and Mikal vanished. Steve gasped with astonishment. Did she just teleport Mikal and herself? Beautiful timing! He could only hope that Sarah had somehow managed to teleport them far out of harm’s way.
The remaining members of the crew that had been hired to kidnap the crown prince stared in disbelief from their hiding place along edge of the forest. This was just supposed to be a simple snatch and grab! Nothing was going as planned. Their fool of a leader just got himself fried to a crisp. And, to top it all off, the prince had managed to escape. Silently motioning to the seven other mercenaries standing beside him, one fast thinking kidnapper whispered a new set of instructions to his mates. “We might have lost the prince, but we cannot go back empty-handed.” He gestured to the tall foreigner with his back to them. “We have to grab that scum, now!”
The rest of the band stared at their new (self-appointed) leader with incredulity. “Did ye not see what he did to the others? What good are we against that?”
The goon glared at his companions. “Do ye want to return without anything to show for our troubles and face him? We might have a chance of living through this if we gift him with a fire thrower. Now, move!” He leapt out into the clearing and fit an arrow to his bow, running as fast and as silently as possible, his gang right on his heels. Their only hope was if they could somehow incapacitate this powerful new enemy before he even realized what was happening to him.
The Prophecy Page 17
